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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22685521">it's always our self we find in the sea</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/what_on_io/pseuds/what_on_io'>what_on_io</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>never give all the heart (for love) [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Anal Sex, Angst, Blow Jobs, Comfort Sex, Dancing, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, Light Bondage, Multi, Not too graphic depictions of torture, Polyamory, Rescue Missions, Sharing a Bed, both actual and pun-wise, but still not very graphic, everyone is in love and it is beautiful, now with added epilogue!, slightly more graphic depictions of torture, so much comfort you wouldn't believe, wireplay</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 09:33:51</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>25,785</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22685521</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/what_on_io/pseuds/what_on_io</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Like the fool he is, the first time Nora showed up Nick thought she was here to rescue him.</i>
</p><p>Nick ponders. Danse and Hancock plot. Nora breaks.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>John Hancock/Nick Valentine, Paladin Danse/John Hancock (Fallout), Paladin Danse/John Hancock/Nick Valentine, Paladin Danse/Nick Valentine, Robert Joseph MacCready/Female Sole Survivor</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>never give all the heart (for love) [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/681470</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>51</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I am a terrible, terrible person who cannot stick to a consistent writing/uploading schedule and balance a full time job at the same time! But here it is! There should be maybe one more chapter to this one, and I'm working on a ridiculous next instalment to the series which I suspect nobody wants at this point! Thanks to anyone who's decided to stick with this shitshow. Not sure how happy I am with this one, to be honest, but here we go anyways.</p><p>Title from e.e. cummings (as usual, poor guy)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Did you do something different with your hair?”</p><p>Nora startles at the question, her fingers convulsing around the wooden spoon she’s holding, sending pasta sauce slopping over the rim of the pot on the stove. MacCready slips his arms around her waist, steadying her; fresh from the shower, smelling of soap and cologne, it could be 2077 all over again.</p><p>“Uh, I don’t think so,” she replies, not looking up. Possibly she’s forgotten to brush it - she’s been like that lately. Forgetting things. Leaving the gas on, the faucets running, her curling tongs smoking on the dresser. The place was only saved from going up in flames by her quick-thinking synthetic son and her real son’s impressive sprinkler network.</p><p>At least the kids are settling in well. And Mac’s stopped complaining about the light and can finally bear to touch her again now that Duncan’s boils are beginning to pop and some of the pallor has left his sunken cheeks. He looks better. They all do, their little family unit, blessed with light and love. If Duncan didn’t have to spend his afternoons in the treatment room and Shaun didn’t hesitate a fraction too long between sentences, if Mac didn’t sometimes look at her like he knew all her bad thoughts, things might be close to perfect.</p><p>“Thanks for cooking, babe,” MacCready whispers into the shell of Nora’s ear. He usually does, for something to occupy his hands now that he’s cut back on the cigarettes (too many smoke alarms down here) but a life in the Wastes has not done wonders for her boyfriend’s palate, no matter how many times she’s tried to introduce him to the spice cabinet.</p><p>Now MacCready leans against the counter, looking rumpled and comfortable in his usual t-shirt and cargo pants, though divested of his hat. A finger darts out to sample the sauce she’s working on, and an appreciative sound emerges from his lips.</p><p>“Mmm, tasty. What is it, mirelurk?”</p><p>And Nora had been doing a fantastic job pretending the world outside was back to normal. At the thought of giant mutated crabs it all comes flooding back - the flames, the screams, an airship plummeting from the sky. The things she’s <em>done</em>, all to hunker down here pretending to be the perfect post-nuclear family.</p><p>“Nope,” she replies brightly, squashing it down again. “Just plain ol’ reconstituted seafood. Creamy, huh?”</p><p>“And you make it sound so gosh-darn delicious, too,” he tells her with a smirk, pecking a kiss to her cheek that she knows she doesn’t deserve after the things she’s forced him to do. She knew he’d never listen to her pleas for him to stay back, couldn’t bring herself to be surprised when he told her this was his mess too. Half and half, he insisted. For both their kids. For their family.</p><p><em>R</em><em>emember who’s important</em>.</p><p>“Kids! Come help me set the table for dinner!” Another thing Mac’s learned, being here. Table manners might be a thing of the past, but here she is again, frozen in time. Watching the kids skitter out to help arrange cutlery and bowls for her pasta under MacCready’s watchful supervision. She keeps half-expecting the TV in the corner to flicker to life with an emergency broadcast announcing the Commies’ imminent arrival once more. Can’t help how her eyes stray to it as she gathers glasses for wine and cups for OJ.</p><p>“How ya feeling, buddy?” she hears Mac ask Duncan, who flashes him a thumbs up. There’s a new spring in both their steps that comes from good food and the clinical whiteness of their new home. Sometimes Nora wonders how any of them will ever find the strength to leave it.</p><p>“Are you going out again after dinner, Mom?” Shaun asks. Ever the perceptive one. She dishes out pasta and sets it in front of the kids first, then serves MacCready a more generous portion. She gets the leftovers, about all she can stomach anymore.</p><p>“Yeah, honey,” she mumbles. Mac’s gaze shifts towards her and she lowers her own to the tabletop. “I won’t be gone long.”</p><p>“You’ll be back in time for my story?” This from Duncan, who’s still young enough for stories. “For Grognak?”</p><p>“Sure thing, sweetie. Although I’m sure your daddy wouldn’t mind giving you a story if I was out late.”</p><p>“Daddy can’t-“</p><p>“Yeah, we’ll figure it out, kiddo. Pasta’s good, by the way,” Mac manages around a forkful, flashing her a grin. She wants to pull him close and bury her face in the crook of his shoulder, make the rest of the world disappear for a while. The last time they made love, she sobbed into his bare chest and MacCready held her through it, brushed her hair behind her ear so gently it was as though she might break apart under his touch. Coming here has made them both weak, in different ways.</p><p>They eat, robotically. Nora forces her fork up to her mouth and back to her pasta again, chewing but not tasting anything. Her gaze flicks around their little living room - Duncan’s colouring books scattered on the carpet, parts for a robot dog Shaun’s building lined up on the coffee table, assorted knick-knacks - a silver necklace, someone’s cigarette lighter, test tubes filled with ominous looking liquids - MacCready brings home from wherever he goes during the daytime on the mantelpiece. Nora doesn’t ask where he gets them from. Understands people need their vices down here, and sticky fingers are the least of them.</p><p>Nora makes it through dinner like she’s made it through the last year of her life: eyes down and focused solely on the task at hand. When forks have finished scraping at bowls and she and Mac have collectively mopped their kids’ faces free of sauce he stands to gather the washing up, takes it to the sink and lets the water run. He’s still unpractised - more than once a piece of crockery proves too slippery and lands back in the bowl with a splash - but he’s getting better.</p><p>Sometimes she misses the old MacCready, who was only ever clumsy in a melee, who could cripple a super mutant from a mile away. Selfishly, she misses when it was just the two of them, curled around one another at her old house in Sanctuary, kisses pressed through giggles to her forehead and her lips and her navel.</p><p>“I’ll be back soon,” she promises him, pulling on her shoes. Institute issued, white plimsoles with squeaky rubber soles. Her old aboveground boots sit sadly in the corner, scrubbed clean of Commonwealth grime by helpful synth maids. “Just going for a walk.”</p><p><em>To clear her head</em> is the official line. Mac’s never questioned it, though she can always feel his gaze follow her out of the front door. She takes a left at the end of her white corridor and swings around into the snazzy glass elevator, rides it all the way to the bottom floor and then slips down an old stairwell to wind up in the basement, where they keep the holding cells.</p><p>Father gave her the passcode under faux-duress, knowing he held all the cards and enjoying watching her squirm, and she inputs it on the keypad by the door now. It unlocks with a hiss of hydraulics and Nora slips in through the gap, warily lets it close behind her. One of these days it won’t open again, probably. She’s resigned herself to that. Deserves it, even.</p><p>The lights down here are automatic, and they flicker to life as she moves around the holding cell, a large, empty room with bare walls and the blinking eye of a camera in one corner. The body on the metal gurney in the centre of the room doesn’t stir - can’t. They’ve tied it down with thick leather straps across its front, two each for the wrists and ankles, another bisecting the throat so it can’t even raise its head to look her in the eye.</p><p>Secretly, guiltily, she prefers it that way.</p><p>“Hello, doll. You’re early,” Nick Valentine says.</p>
<hr/><p>Like the fool he is, the first time Nora showed up Nick thought she was here to rescue him.</p><p>He’d been trapped in his little room for three days by then, strapped tightly to the rigid metal trolley, unable to so much as flex his wrists. Most of the time the lights stayed off, only disturbed by external movements which he wasn’t free enough to execute, so until he adjusted to the darkness he was pretty much blind. Not that there’s much to see in here anyway: duck-egg blue walls, a dirty grey ceiling, a swivel chair and a fancy terminal to his right. Maybe if he could figure out a way to shift himself towards the terminal he could work on a way of getting out of here, but the straps are secured with buckles that he has no way of getting at.</p><p>When Nora finally showed up, he’d become accustomed to the dark, accustomed to restraints, accustomed to the lingering silence that filled his cell. Turns out sensory deprivation is a welcome relief compared to Institute scientists flooding the room with their clipboards and machinery, trailing snakes of cables behind them and brandishing all manner of sharp instruments, all meant to maim or dismember.</p><p>Pain is different for him. Old Nick remembers the bite of a knife to the gut, scraped knees and elbows from childhood, the throb of a hangover and the overwhelming, full-body ache of a beating. Synth Nick’s pain was more muted, as though experienced through a dull sheet of plexiglass. Here, the Institute have figured out a way to bust out that screen and replace it with an intimate sensation he’s never known before, one that twists his insides and travels to the innermost core of him while they strip off parts and jam pliers and probes into his wires. Sometimes an electric current will accompany the probes, and that’s enough to make him howl despite himself. And then there are the questions, the relentless hounding for memories he doesn’t have.</p><p>What strikes him hardest is how he’s ceased to be anything but a machine all over again. They might as well be stripping an old terminal for parts with how they cast blank gazes across his naked body. Even with Vinny and his goons he’d been a person; perhaps not ever a threat, but a person.</p><p>Still, best not to dwell.</p><p>Nora’s presence had been refreshing. A blessing, Nick thought in the privacy of his own circuitboards. Only instead of rushing to unleash him she’d crumpled into the chair beside his gurney and stared at him, and then she’d started to cry.</p><p>“Nora, sweetheart, don’t cry,” he tried, though he isn’t a detective for nothing. Tears now meant regret, not relief. “It’s all right.”</p><p>“It’s not all right, Nick. Fuck, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, this is-“ she cut herself off, tugged at her hair so hard a few strands came loose in her palm. “It’s all my fault.”</p><p>And he listened while she cried. He listens every time she visits - not like there’s much else to occupy him in here. That first day, she told him she had no other choice, that it was this or see MacCready’s kid die. Even Nick knows this is the better option. Still, he can’t help but let his mind drift, sometimes, when they aren’t busy ripping wires out of his head, to the days of travelling with Nora, back when things were normal. Or as normal as they got in the Commonwealth, anyways. He remembers her having his back - hell, remembers when she was still a trembling wreck fresh outta the Vault. He still has visions of the first time she’d pushed him aside to brain a feral with the butt of her rifle, how he’d whistled at her, low and impressed. Remembers them laying side by side in some shell of an old house, the moonlight painting her dark hair silver and her eyes drooping closed with sleepiness and trust. Remembers how pale she’d been when she returned from the Institute that first day. How she’d always looked at him like he was more than just a machine.</p><p>And dammit, the betrayal still stings.</p><p>“You don’t have to feel bad, sweetheart,” he’d told her anyway. Tried wriggling the fingers of what used to be his good hand for her to hold, for some semblance of comfort in this cold white room.</p><p>She didn’t take it.</p><p>To be fair to her, Nick knows he’s in a state, stripped as he is of his various silicone coverings. He supposes they need easy access to his innards, or maybe just found the lack of symmetry in his hands unbearable to look at, so he has a new metal claw to match his right. He can’t raise his head enough to see what else has been done to him, but from the ghost of an ache in his lower legs presumes his feet received similar treatment. He’d half expected Nora to recoil at the sight of him, but of course she hadn’t, kept her face impassive just like she had all those months ago in Vault 114.</p><p>Maybe she’s better at hiding things from him than he thought.</p><p>Now Nora takes her usual seat, crossing her legs one over the other and then switching, like she can’t settle. Nick watches, head turned to the side, about as much movement as he’s allowed nowadays, as she yanks at a thread in her cream sweater, drawing it around her index finger and pulling tight. The tip of her finger burns purple.</p><p>“How’s Duncan?” Nick asks. It’s always his first question for her, double ended. He wants the poor kid to get better, of course he does - MacCready’s a good man and Duncan sounds like a good kid, and Nick knows how hard they all worked to find a cure. And, selfishly, after Duncan’s treatment ends, Nora might be willing to contemplate Nick’s escape.</p><p>It’s wishful thinking. The only way he’s ever getting out of here is in his composite parts. Still, it’s nice to have something to fantasise about.</p><p>“Better,” Nora whispers. “He’s getting there. His boils are going down.” It seems to calm her, this routine, turning her mind to the people who need her. She told him about her new son, a gift from her real one, how he loves robotics and building things. Under different circumstances Nick thinks they’d all get along famously.</p><p>“That’s good news, doll,” Valentine replies. “How’re you holdin’ up? You look thinner - all that Institute food still not up to pre-war standards, eh?”</p><p>“Please don’t be nice to me.” Nora’s voice sounds as though it’s being forced out of her throat. “Not today, Nick, please.”</p><p>Nick sucks in a breath of stale air he doesn’t need. His metal fingers twitch on the gurney, itching for a cigarette. What he wouldn’t give to be smoking on the State House balcony with Hancock puffing on Jet beside him, Danse coming up to sneak an arm around John’s waist-</p><p>And to think, he’d been doing rather a good job of not thinking about the two of them. Still cries out for them sometimes, when the worst of the pain comes, but on the whole the memory of them is sequestered safely in a mental lockbox. Safe.</p><p>“What is it, doll?” Nick asks, because he has to. She hasn’t been so clearly wound up in front of him since his first night strapped to this table, all those weeks ago. “What’s wrong?”</p><p>“I need-“ Nora cuts herself off, standing suddenly enough that the chair scrapes its battered wheels across the stone floor. “Nick. I need you to-“ Again, she stalls, covering her face with both her palms and yanking her hair by the roots, exhaling a painful breath through her teeth. “I need you to co-operate, Nick.”</p><p>Huh. Somehow he hadn’t been expecting that.</p><p>“I’ve hardly got any other choice, sweetheart. Tied up as I am and all.”</p><p>“That’s- not what I mean.” She’s pacing furiously now, wearing her cream plimsoles thin. Nick feels a stomach he doesn’t possess drop. “They want information. How your memories work, how much of old Nick is still in there. About what happened when you first got out of the Institute. About Jenny Lands and Eddie Winter, about Diamond City, everything. They want to know how you gained people’s trust looking like you do. Then they want intel on escaped synths - names, locations. To send Coursers after them.”</p><p>Nick chuckles, a dry sound that pulls at his ragged voice unit. “Reckon you’d know more about that than me, doll. And I don’t see what use my memories would be. Like I keep sayin’, first thing I remember about life on the outside is waking up in a dumpster in some back alley, with a pounding head and a metal body. The rest is common knowledge. If they want those memories so bad they can hook themselves up to my hard drive or somethin’,” Nick says.</p><p>“Your hardware’s too old,” Nora says sharply. Call him vain, but the barb stings a little. “You’re only a prototype, Nick, it was never properly rolled out. If you don’t start talking soon… Look, at the moment they’re talking about making you into an infiltration unit. Placing you back in Diamond City to gather intel for Shaun. They’ll overwrite your memories first, then drop you back at your office. You’ll be able to live your life, Nick. It might not be exactly the same as before, but it’ll be something.”</p><p>He startles a bit at that. Could be a lie, course, but Nora sounds as though she believes it. Would they really bother with an old synth like him? And could they really rewrite who he is all over again? He doesn’t know if he could bear it.</p><p>“And I’ll be their perfect puppet, right? In their pocket just like McDonough. You really think that’s a life worth living, Nora?” The possibility rattles him. Would he really prefer that, living oblivious aboveground, reporting back to the very people who dumped him like a sack of rotten meat, betraying the ones he’s worked so hard to earn the trust of? Knowing he’s just a tool, no longer anywhere near capable of sentience?</p><p>“Surely it’s better than the alternative? Nick, they’ll dismantle you. They’ll run their final experiments and they’ll take you apart while you’re still conscious and I’ll have to <em>watch</em>-“</p><p>“Whoa, Nora, calm down. Breathe,” Nick warns, wishing he could usher her into a more comfortable seat. All the time, her warning echoes through his mind; the anticipation of pain is already lurking in the shadows, waiting for screwdrivers and the resounding thump of his own body parts tossed into a waste disposal unit ready for recycling while he lies limbless on this godforsaken gurney. He soldiers on. “I get the feeling we ain’t talking about me anymore, huh?”</p><p>Nora’s head snaps up, her gaze settling on his face at last. “How do you…”</p><p>“Detective, remember?” he intones, huffing a tired chuckle. “I have a nose for these things.”</p><p>“Look, I wouldn’t be asking this if it didn’t matter to me, obviously. You know I wouldn’t. But Shaun- Father- my <em>son</em> is threatening to withhold Duncan’s treatment. He could die, Nick. He’s only a baby and he could die and it’s not <em>fair</em>,” Nora spits.</p><p>“And he’ll dismantle your son,” Nick says gently.</p><p>Nora’s next words leave her as though yanked by an invisible thread. “Fine. Yes. And he’ll dismantle my son, call him a failed experiment and toss him out into the nearest dumpster. Does that answer your question, <em>detective</em>? He’s installed… failsafes. If Shaun - my Shaun - attempts to leave, he’ll self-destruct. If I attempt to remove them, same thing. And if we stay here and you don’t co-operate, and I stop acting like their good little deputy? Shaun gets torn apart in front of me and I lose him all over again, Nick. I can’t let that happen. I won’t.”</p><p>What’s left of Nick’s heart breaks all over again for her. He knows what she wants - for him to rail at her, probably. Break her steely Institute-brand resolve with logical steps and get everyone outta here safely, take down the evil overlords while he’s at it. But, smart as he may be, the only way out of this for good is to burn the place down to the ground, and that could take months to orchestrate. Certainly longer than little Duncan and Shaun have to spare, anyway.</p><p>Besides, Nick’s had good innings. This is an okay ending. He’ll give up what he can, let them probe his memories for his first impressions of the Commonwealth, tell them how he established himself a cushy little office in Diamond City and infiltrated a staunchly anti-synth settlement. How he hunted Winter down with Nora at his side to put his dead fiancée to rest. What good it will do them, he doesn’t know. But people like that don’t need reasons. Knowledge is power, and power is everything.</p><p>What he won’t give up is Danse. No matter what. Let them pull his code apart, turn him into a perfectly unthinking thing, but John Hancock deserves to be happy.</p><p>If the other synth has any sense, Danse’ll have gone to ground with John after that little scene in the Third Rail; eloped to a bunker somewhere and locked the heavy door behind them. Hopefully forgotten all about ol’ Nick Valentine.</p><p>Even he knows this, too, is wishful thinking. But there’s no way he could go through with this otherwise.</p><p>“Fine,” he says, thinking of dispassionate gloved hands being the last thing he feels, bright torchlight shined bright into his eyes as the last thing he sees. Electric shocks and twisting pliers and error messages popping up in his visual cortex. “I’ll co-operate.”</p><p>“I’m sorry I can’t get you out of here, Nick,” Nora whispers. “I’m sorry I can’t fix this.”</p><p><em>Me too, doll, </em>Nick thinks.</p>
<hr/><p>Danse has not gone to ground.</p><p>He watches the last of the sunlight fading over the horizon from the State House balcony, smoking a cigarette he’s pilfered from Hancock. Danse stopped choking on the smoke a few days ago; now it helps numb the frayed ends of his synthetic nerves.</p><p>A few minutes pass in silence, with only the clatter of doors below him to break it up. The sun finishes its descent, the sky lit only by a few stray embers glowing orange. The gas lamps around Goodneighbor begin to flicker to life, the Watch nightshift taking their positions at the gates. A routine Danse has become intimately familiar with.</p><p>Here’s another: the doors open behind him and Hancock stumbles outside, catching himself on the railing. One of these days Danse fears he’ll topple right over, drugged out of his mind as he is on Med-X and Psycho and whatever else he’s been injecting.</p><p>Hancock collapses on the ground beside Danse, one hand reaching out silently for a drag of the cigarette. Danse watches his molten lips curl protectively around it, watches him inhale, tipping his head back to breathe smoke from his nostrils. He doesn’t give the cigarette back, but Danse can’t bring himself to mind.</p><p>Neither of them say anything for a long moment. Danse rests his head on the wooden railings and looks out at the street; Hancock’s eyes close, just briefly, just a power nap, he always insists. Minutes will pass this way. Then Hancock scrabbles in the pocket of his frock coat for a container of Mentats, pops a couple of pills into his mouth and clambering back to his feet, hand already extended to help Danse up.</p><p>Then they both head inside, back to the blueprints scattered across the floorboards and their hastily scribbled notes pinned to the walls. Danse’s head throbs at the sight of the clutter - they’ve been at this for three solid weeks and are barely making any progress. The plans are all starting to blur into each other; Danse’s eyes cross when he brings them back up to his face. But Nora managed to build this contraption - admittedly, with the help of friends in higher places, friends he and Hancock don’t have. But how difficult can it be? It’s simple mechanics. Just engineering. If Ingram was here they’d have it cracked in no time-</p><p>But Ingram is dead, just like the rest of his family, and even if she wasn’t she’d likely have shot Danse on sight.</p><p>He forgets, sometimes. Hancock helps with that.</p><p>“This must connect to… No, that can’t be right,” Danse murmurs to nobody in particular, rifling through the stack of papers nearest to him. Hancock barely looks up from his own sheets, leaning over to grab a fountain pen from the desk and scrawl something across the top page in loopy handwriting. Funny; Danse never even knew he could write, before all this. The things they’ve learned about each other, even just like this.</p><p>Occasionally Fahrenheit or Ham will poke their heads through the door to offer drinks or food or chems. Their momentum is rarely broken; food is inhaled from plates on the floor, Bourbon makes the time flow faster and chems help them stay on track. They don’t leave Hancock’s room, save for their daily balcony excursions. Sometimes Danse forces Hancock to steal a few hours of shuteye, insisting on staying awake because he’s no longer bogged down by human needs, betrayed only by the drooping of his eyelids and the yawns that force their way through unbidden. Hancock drags him up onto the mattress on those nights, covers them both up with the ratty blanket and holds Danse tight enough to bruise.</p><p>The first few sleeps, he’d wake almost on the hour. Danse - insomniac he is - was alert to it immediately, felt his muscles tensing in preparation of impending disaster, but Hancock merely tugged him bodily closer and clung hard to him, strung limpet-like around his torso. Danse knows he’s remembering a foreign voice emerging from Valentine’s mouth, jeering that he won’t be far behind him in the Institute’s clutches. Always does his best to squash the terror and take care of Hancock instead.</p><p>“I’m here, John,” he whispers on those nights. “I’m right here.” Danse’s arms went to stroke Hancock’s back, feeling as though he was comforting a spooked brahmin. “We’re safe. I’m here.”</p><p>“Don’t you go anywhere, ya hear me?” Hancock asked every time, voice hoarse and face damp with tears. “Shit, I can’t lose you too.”</p><p>He’s been surprisingly gentle through this whole ordeal. When the chems came out in earnest Danse fully expected Hancock to flash feral in front of his very eyes, overloaded on Psycho and jittery from the Mentats. But whatever ferocity they bring out in him is turned towards their project, salvaged from the ruins of Boston Airport where he’d helped Nora to build her signal interceptor the first time, before the Prydwen came down in a fiery wreck around them. They’d had to pick through the decaying bodies of his fallen comrades to reach what remained of the charred blueprints, the curled metal husk of Nora’s parts; the images are still seared behind Danse’s eyelids whenever he foolishly entertains the notion of sleep. Still, it’s progress. They have most of what they need - all that remains is to slot the pieces together.</p><p>Neither of them have seen her for months.</p><p>“This is a dead end,” Hancock reports eventually, balling up one of his papers and launching it in the general direction of an already overflowing wastepaper basket. “I don’t think I got the brains for this shit.”</p><p>“You underestimate yourself,” Danse tells him truthfully, though the beam emitter and the reflector platform are beginning to look one and the same to him. The words <em>sensor module</em> look foreign. “We’ll get this done, don’t worry.”</p><p>“When? After they take Nick apart to see how he ticks? After they don’t bother putting him back together again? <em>When</em>, Danse? Every minute he spends with those fuckers the time’s ticking down on his life. <em>Fuck</em>!” The last word is snarled, and Hancock yanks his tricorn off his head and slings it hard into the doorframe. “Worst part is, Nick’d know exactly what to do. How to save him.”</p><p>“We will save him,” Danse insists, crawling over to his lover to rest a heavy hand on his shoulder. “We will, John. But I think we both need to rest. Look at the plans with fresh eyes in the morning.”</p><p>Hancock scoffs. “Can’t sleep.”</p><p>“You could try,” Danse says, knowing it’s futile. He’s been told the same thing countless times by Haylen and Cade, knows firsthand that it’s bullshit. Finally, he murmurs, “We could try together.”</p><p>John looks up at him, droopy eyed despite himself. “Think my brain might need a little more convincing, sunshine.” And <em>there’s</em> a look Danse hasn’t seen in a while - a smirk playing on Hancock’s lips, a glimmer in his dark eyes. Danse drags their mouths together without a second thought; he’s missed this, missed so much skin on skin contact, the feel of Hancock’s breath on his neck. He pulls them both to their feet, knowing they’ll be too sleepy to take themselves to bed after, and pushes Hancock firmly onto the mattress, reaches up to peel his t-shirt over his head.</p><p>Hancock watches, mouth slightly open, but doesn’t make a move for his own shirt. Eventually Danse undoes the buttons for him and moves down to the flag belt while Hancock shucks the fabric away from his shoulders, eagerly divesting him of trousers and pants both, pressing a kiss to his collarbone.</p><p>How strange it feels to be allowed this.</p><p>“C’mere, gorgeous,” John growls, reaching for the zipper on Danse’s jeans. “Need you.”</p><p>Danse doesn’t resist him. It’s so easy to melt into Hancock’s touch, forget the papers scattered at their feet for a few minutes. He knows Hancock needs this as much as he does; they’ve been working flat-out for weeks without a break. Valentine would understand.</p><p>The thought of Nick brings a guilty flush to Danse’s neck, the skin prickling uncomfortably. Is he taking advantage of John’s addled state? Is this too much?</p><p>As if reading his thoughts, the other man pauses in licking a stripe up Danse’s jaw to peer at him. “This ain’t wrong, Danse. We’re just taking a break. Getting some rest, yeah? Nicky wouldn’t begrudge it,” he says.</p><p>“I’m sorry he isn’t here,” Danse replies honestly. He misses Nick’s presence in their strange little trio, misses the comforting whir of his fans as they settled down close together. “But let me make you feel good, just for now. For a little while.”</p><p>Hancock grins, and if it doesn’t quite reach his eyes well, Danse isn’t going to comment. He presses a feather-light kiss to Hancock’s lips and moves downwards to stroke his cock, making the ghoul tip his head back with a hiss.</p><p>“S’good,” John breathes. “Don’t stop.”</p><p>Danse doesn’t; continues his ministrations until Hancock is shuddering in his arms, and only then does Danse lower his mouth to John’s dick, taking just the head of him between his lips and sucking. He’s still unpracticed but Hancock doesn’t seem to mind, just tangles his fingers in Danse’s hair - not too tight, not yet - and exhales sharply with pleasure.</p><p>“Here, lemme-“ He’s rummaging in the bedside cabinet for something, which he reaches over to press into Danse’s palm. “Here.”</p><p>Danse looks down at the bottle of lube like he’s never seen it before. John’s cock slips from his mouth as he says “You want to...?” He shifts his legs slightly, letting Hancock read the implications himself. Maybe he’d enjoy watching Danse finger himself before he fucks him.</p><p>“Other way ‘round, sunshine.” Legs spread, Hancock turns to fold himself over the edge of the mattress, peering over his shoulder at Danse. “A good fuck always makes me sleepy.”</p><p>“Are you...” Because they haven’t done it this way since... before. When Danse fucking Hancock was just a way to get through the endless nights on patrol in Goodneighbor, a desperate release of pent up fury. Would Hancock really trust him to do this right, even after all this time? Hell, does Danse trust himself not to fuck this up? “Are you sure?”</p><p>“Sure I’m sure,” John rasps, tangling his fingers with Danse’s to tug him closer. Danse’s own fingers go slack around the bottle of lube, and it takes him two tries to get the lid off. “You don’t gotta hold back, either. I remember how this goes.”</p><p>The visceral, pounding memory of it makes something low in Danse’s gut recoil but gets his cock to stir regardless. Some sick part of him wants to slick himself up and pound into John until neither of them can remember their own names, much less focus on the plans scattered around them. A more sane part warns him to go slow, to coat his fingers liberally in the stuff before easing them slowly into Hancock’s body, take him apart piece by piece. Hancock mews in surprise at the hesitant contact.</p><p>“Not to be a hypocrite or anything, sunshine,” he breathes, “but I meant it when I said you didn’t have to hold back. I ain’t a fainting virgin over here.”</p><p>“Shh,” Danse scolds. “I’m taking my time.” And he does, stretching him gently with two fingers first, then risking a third. When he feels his middle finger bump Hancock’s prostate, the other man bucks so violently Danse might as well have slapped him. “There it is,” Danse whispers, and the words feel foreign on his lips.</p><p>“Ah,” Hancock manages. “Ah, Danse, ah, <em>shit</em>.”</p><p>“Good?”</p><p>“Amazing. Divine,” Hancock pants. “Just get inside me, yeah? Need more. Need you.”</p><p>Danse takes a second to line himself up, grips the base of his cock for better aim, then starts slowly nudging inside the ghoul’s body. Hancock’s just as tight and hot as he remembers, back when he hadn’t bothered to go slow, back when their encounters were just that, over in minutes, back when he left Hancock shivering and spent on the bare mattress-</p><p>“Are you sure this is okay?” Danse whispers, shuddering at the memory and the heat both. “I don’t want to hurt you.” <em>Not anymore</em>, he doesn’t say.</p><p>“S’good, I promise. You can go harder. Slap me around a bit,” Hancock suggests.</p><p>“Not- not right now,” Danse whispers. He’s not saying never. But he needs this, suspects they both do, needs the memory of gentle touch and feathered kisses against Hancock’s neck, Danse’s hands skimming the length of his skinny frame. Hancock is pliant in his arms, only keens when the tip of Danse’s cock touches that spot again, presses himself back until his ass is brushing Danse’s pelvic bone.</p><p>Danse winds a hand around to work Hancock’s dick, still gentle as anything as he tries thrusting, just easing himself into the tight press of the body in front of him. Experimental fingers go to probe John’s balls, feels them draw up tighter to his body. “Are you close?”</p><p>“I can hold out for a bit,” Hancock says, like that’s what Danse had asked. “Wait for you.”</p><p>“No,” Danse tells him. “Come. Whenever you can. I- I want to feel you around me.”</p><p>“Hngh,” Hancock slurs. Danse feels his entrance convulse around his cock, sending a dizzy wave of pleasure through him. He’s not far off, himself.</p><p>“Come on, John. Come for me. Show me you can do it.” The words don’t sound like his own, and Danse only realises he’s channeling his lover when Hancock comes violently across the mattress at his words. A few more increasingly desperate thrusts and Danse joins him, losing himself in the slick heat and press of John’s ass clenched tight around him.</p><p>“Love you,” they say at the same time. Their synchronicity startles a laugh out of them both, and Danse is extra careful as he slips himself free of Hancock, making the other man groan regardless. He half-heartedly mops at them both with his discarded t-shirt, then gives up with a grunt.</p><p>“Think you can sleep now?” Danse wonders. “I won’t go anywhere. I’m right here.”</p><p>“Yeah. If you stay, I think I can manage a few hours.”</p><p>“I won’t leave you,” Danse vows. Prays it’s a vow he can keep as Hancock settles softly into sleep, and worries, more seriously, that it can’t ever be.</p>
<hr/><p>Nora escapes Nick’s cell and presses herself flat against the cool stone wall on the outside, panting like she’s just run a marathon. She can’t breathe. Her white world is collapsing all around her into a single point of bright light, vision dark and fuzzy at the edges, and she can’t <em>breathe</em>-</p><p>“Nora?” A voice from behind her. Barely audible over the sound of her own pulse thrumming in her ears. She summons the strength to raise her head at least, trying to focus her obstinate eyes on the approaching figure. “Nora, what the <em>fuck </em>is going on?”</p><p>The cuss word startles her out of it, because she’s heard him swear maybe once before. She blinks and MacCready is standing in front of her, fingers curled lightly around a brass candlestick he must’ve lifted from somewhere.</p><p>“Where are the kids?” she echoes faintly.</p><p>“Sleeping. Safe. Nora - what the hell is Nick Valentine doing strapped to a table?” Mac asks, incredulous. Nora feels a ridiculous laugh bubbling up out of her chest at the sight of her lover - barefoot, hair mussed, cheeks dappled pink from the shock.</p><p>“We should get back to the kids. They shouldn’t be alone-“</p><p>“Nora, if anywhere’s safe it’s down here. The kids are fine. Just- answer me, please. What’s going on?” His voice is gentle now, an arm going to slip around her trembling shoulders. Nora doesn’t deserve him.</p><p>“Nick is… helping with some inquiries.”</p><p>“Inquiries,” Mac repeats flatly.</p><p>“Yes.” Nora casts a glance back through the glass to where Nick lies. The lights are still on. “My son’s people have some questions for him.”</p><p>“How… long has he been here?”</p><p>Honestly, she can’t remember. Weeks, certainly. Months? She isn’t sure. She doesn’t know how much time has passed since they moved their assorted crap into a little white apartment, doesn’t know how long it’s been since Duncan arrived, since her synth son started cluttering up their quarters with tiny circuitboards and screwdrivers. Too long, probably. She can’t remember the feeling of the sun on her face.</p><p>What she does remember, faintly, is this: Nick Valentine being wheeled out of the elevator on a gurney, thrashing his head from side to side, screaming for Hancock and Paladin Danse, of all people. Screaming louder than she ever heard him scream before, an inhuman sound borne out of disorientation and the pain of a Courser’s cattle prod jammed into his exposed parts. She ran to his side, yelled at them to stop, breathed again when they did. She remembers barking at them that this whole thing had to be a mistake, that Nick was her friend, remembers them taking him anyway. She’d run off to Shaun’s office to yell some more, and he’d threatened to take her child apart limb by limb and leave his parts in a box.</p><p>“I don’t know,” she answers honestly. It could have been decades ago, for how fuzzy the memories are.</p><p>“Is this where you go every night?” Mac asks, still overwhelmingly gentle.</p><p>“You were following me,” she says. “You don’t trust me.”</p><p>“That’s not true, Nora. I was worried about you.”</p><p>“You shouldn’t trust me. This is what I do, Mac. I let them take my friends to be tortured and I don’t do a damn thing about it.” She sinks slowly to the floor again, letting the wall take the brunt of her weight. MacCready follows her down, cradles her tight to his chest and tucks his chin over the top of her head. For a minute it’s easy to forget he’s shorter than her by a good half foot.</p><p>“Did Shaun threaten you?” Mac asks after a moment of silence.</p><p>“Yes,” she breathes.</p><p>“Then it’s not your fault, Nora. None of this is your fault. And we’re gonna get through it together, okay?” She can feel his words ghosted across her skin, burrows closer into his body while shivers wrack her own.</p><p>“What do we do about Nick?” she asks, like the answer might be easy now MacCready’s here. His answering sigh tells her it won’t be, though his arms tighten a fraction around her. She’d gone into this fully expecting him to hate her. Still wouldn’t blame him if he does.</p><p>“I don’t know. We’ll figure it out.”</p><p>“I want to go outside,” she says after a beat. “I want to feel the wind in my hair. I want- I want to get in a fight. I want to beat up some Raiders, Mac.”</p><p>“God, I want to shoot something,” MacCready laughs. “You wouldn’t believe how bad I’ve wanted to shoot something these past few weeks.”</p><p>“Oh, I think I would-“</p><p>“Ma’am?” A robotic voice emerges from behind the cocoon of Mac’s body. “Father would like to see you in his office.” The Gen-3 dismisses himself with a stilted bow, never quite making eye contact. His flustered reverence lets her pretend he didn’t just hear the entirety of their conversation; Nora’s on her feet before Mac can stop her.</p><p>“What now?” A whine nearly escapes her; she presses her lips shut to hold it inside. “What more can he possibly want from me?”</p><p>They’ll find out soon enough. They ride the elevator to Shaun’s floor, sweaty hands clutching each other, and step into his living quarters to find him sitting up in a bed, connected to an EKG machine with electrodes smattered across his bare chest, grey hair falling into his eyes.</p><p>“Mother. How lovely of you to pay me a visit so late,” Shaun says, the words rattling in his throat. “Forgive my state of undress; I’m simply conducting a few checks. Do sit down.”</p><p>Nora collapses into a seat. MacCready remains standing a foot in front of her, a hand pressed to her shoulder. “What’s this about, Shaun?”</p><p>Her son begins disconnecting the electrodes, peeling sticky pads away from the coarse hair of his chest with a pained grunt. “I understand you’ve just been to pay your… <em>friend</em> a visit. How are things progressing with the prototype?”</p><p>“Nick’s agreed to co-operate,” she says, voice steady. “He’ll answer your questions.”</p><p>“Hmm. Good news, I suppose. We might as well take what information it has before it’s decommissioned. The thing is obsolete; can’t be trusted out in the Commonwealth even with a tight reprogramming. Unfortunate - it could have been an asset, had we apprehended it sooner. Still, plenty of other... possibilities.” The man hums, bunching his wires up onto a trolley and clicking his fingers for a nearby synth to roll the machine away. Shaun struggles into a silk button-up pyjama shirt while Nora and MacCready look on. “Regardless, its co-operation is no longer our top priority. We’ve received intel on an underground group calling themselves the Railroad. Helping synths escape our facility, filling their heads with ridiculous notions of being <em>free</em>.”</p><p><em>No</em>, Nora thinks. <em>Not now</em>.</p><p>“You understand how dangerous these ‘free’ synths could become, don’t you, Mother?”</p><p>“Of course,” she grits out. “They could rise up against the Institute.”</p><p>“Against our <em>home</em>, Mother. Against safety. Against progress. All the things you’ll be inheriting soon enough,” Shaun reminds her with a cough. Dressed, he eases himself back into a mound of pillows with a sigh of relief, eyes flickering briefly closed. “They need taking care of, obviously.”</p><p>“Obviously,” Nora echoes.</p><p>“And while you’re at it, there’s a synth I’ve been made aware of. Escaped a good few years back, had its memory wiped. Joined the Brotherhood of Steel. It would make an interesting case study. Imagine, indoctrinated against your very existence, hmm? Designation M7-97. I’ll supply you with its recall code, of course. Bring it home, Mother.” A flicker of a smile plays on Shaun’s lips. “Actually, I believe the two of you might already be acquainted, actually. You knew it as Paladin Danse.”</p><p>Well, shit. Who woulda thought?</p><p>“You’d best get going,” Shaun warns, breaths rattling harshly in his ancient lungs. “The Railroad won’t bide their time much longer. We need to make our move before they make theirs. You can take your… boyfriend with you. The children will be looked after.”</p><p>“I’m not leaving them behind,” Nora tries, feeling sick at the thought. “I can’t.”</p><p>“As I said, they’ll be taken care of. Please, Mother. I need my rest. We’ll see each other again when the job is done.”</p><p><em>Okay</em>, Nora thinks, getting to her feet and dragging MacCready out into the corridor with her, wanting to shield the both of them from the maniac she pushed out of her womb.</p><p>“What now?” Mac asks once the door slides shut after them, turning to look at her with a frown. “They’re gonna decommission Valentine, we have to-“</p><p>“Now, we head for the Railroad,” Nora tells him, loud enough to be heard through the closed door. Now to Railroad HQ, to Desdemona. Trusting, naive Desdemona, who doesn’t know what Nora has already sacrificed to be here. To Deacon, who watched her from afar, who welcomed her into the fold. To Tom and Glory and Carrington, who might not have trusted her at first but came to a begrudging kind of acceptance as she fetched and carried and killed for them.</p><p>Just as she had the Brotherhood before them.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>
  <i>“Should probably take a look inside that head of yours, Nicky,” John says, already rattling a tin of mentats and popping a couple into his mouth, kicking his boots haphazardly across the room. “Don’t want you missin’ anything important.”</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>Nick unwinds his fingers where they’ve clenched too tight together, reminds himself that this is just Hancock, that he’s home and safe and any hands in his wires will be gentle. “You think you can figure out what goes where?”</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>Danse clears his throat at this, says quietly, “I can.”</i>
</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Dawn has only just broken when there’s an almighty crackling noise from outside, and Hancock lurches up off the bed with a cry.</p>
<p>Danse is gone.</p>
<p>Hancock allows himself one minute to panic. He’s still half-swaddled in the sheets that they’d tugged around them both in sleep, and he slowly extricates himself legs first. The mentats wore off in the night; now his head pulses with pain when he sits up. This is his first morning sober in who knows how long. He hasn’t missed it.</p>
<p>Hancock’s heard that sound twice in his lifetime. Once was when he accompanied Nora to the old airport and sent her traipsing back into the Institute. The second was-</p>
<p>Christ,<em> Danse.</em></p>
<p>There’s a Jet canister on the desk; he scoops it up, takes a long huff of fumes and feels the world slow down to a slow pulse around him. The pain in his head dulls to a throb, enough for him to scrub the crust out of his eyes with one hand and step into a pair of pants. Across the room, the door’s been left ajar - Hancock picks his way blearily across the rubble decorating his quarters, stepping over papers and tools and drug paraphernalia with half-lidded eyes. Shit, they should tidy up. Or leave this disaster zone of a room long enough for Fahrenheit to tidy up, anyway, ‘cause these last few weeks have seeped the remaining life outta him, and she might pretend she doesn’t but he knows she enjoys cleaning, it’s some sick pleasure for her to see the detritus of his life strewn about-</p>
<p>The hit of Jet wears off too quickly, and he forces himself out into the hallway and-</p>
<p>Smack bang into Danse’s chest.</p>
<p>“Shit!” Hancock cries, stumbling backwards. The other man is holding what used to be two steaming mugs of coffee, the contents of which are now splattered across his bare chest. “Sorry, shit. I thought you were-“</p>
<p>“Ow,” Danse complains without anything behind it, though his skin has turned scarlet from the impact. “I heard a noise. I, um, I made coffee. Or- sorry.”</p>
<p>Hancock’s breathing too hard to form a coherent reply. Instead, he draws Danse into a hug, breathes him in, tucks his face into the taller man’s neck and holds him there for a long moment. “Doesn’t matter. Fuck, you’re here. Then what the fuck was-“</p>
<p>He doesn’t have time to finish, because standing a little ways behind Danse at the top of the stairs is Nora, dressed in a clean white coat and pressed trousers. Her make-up’s done perfect, dark hair curled into little ringlets around her face, and she looks far too clean to have spent the past few months aboveground.</p>
<p>Hancock hasn’t seen her since Sanctuary. They’d travelled together some, with and without Nick. Mostly, he knows her as a crack shot with a sarcastic mouth, good with crafting nifty gadgets out of junk. A woman out of time. He knows she’s playing a good few sides at once, knows she’s shacking up with MacCready and has a back door into the Institute. Put simply? Doesn’t know her well enough to trust a damn word that comes out of her mouth, not while she’s decked out in Institute colours.</p>
<p>“What the hell are you doing here?” Hancock asks, because there’s only one explanation for the old world chic she’s sporting, and it’s all dawning too slow for his liking. It hadn’t even crossed his mind-</p>
<p>“Nice to see you too,” Nora mumbles. “Guess I missed quite a bit around here, huh?” She gestures with a hand between him and Danse, both in various states of undress, still tucked together on the landing. Hancock unwinds his arms from around his lover and moves away a few inches, just in case Danse still sees her as his Brotherhood ilk and gets jittery.</p>
<p>(He should be over it by now - he <em>is</em> - but it’s one thing being out and proud in theory and another to stare your former compatriot in the face with a ghoul on your arm, and he doesn’t want Danse to flee. Needs him here.)</p>
<p>“Looks like you ain’t the only one, sister,” Hancock replies, taking her in. There’s an Institute insignia on her breast pocket. A fancy energy pistol at her hip. Her boots are the only things that still look real, coated in Commonwealth muck as they are. Hancock feels his fingers twitch for his gun, left somewhere in the assorted piles of crap around their bed.</p>
<p>“Yeah. Well. We all have to make sacrifices.”</p>
<p>“Sacrifices?” Danse echoes beside him. The only word he’s uttered so far. When Hancock turns to frown at him the colour has drained from his face, and his grip is so tight on the mugs still clenched in his hands that they’re shaking. Hancock raises a cautious hand to touch his elbow, and one of the cups falls to the ground and shatters into ceramic shards on impact.</p>
<p>“Danse…”</p>
<p>Before Hancock can utter another word, the other man’s moving. He flings the remaining mug aside and one beefy arm shoots out, bullet fast, to pin Nora to the wall by the throat. His free hand, no longer shaking, wrangles her own gun from its holster and presses the barrel to her temple.</p>
<p>“You <em>bitch</em>.”</p>
<p>Hancock ain’t stupid. The pieces click into place slowly; he hears Nick saying <em>he’s her sponsor in the Brotherhood, she’s undercover for the Railroad, don’t give yourself a coronary!</em> Remembers the flash of silver as she disappeared into the underbelly of the city, going to meet her long lost son and returning this squeaky clean creature in front of them.</p>
<p>It might have taken him a few more heartbeats to get there, but he knows exactly what conclusion Danse has come to.</p>
<p>“It was you,” Hancock echoes, caught somewhere between stunned and impressed. “You blew up that airship. Talk about playin’ the field.”</p>
<p>“They were my <em>family</em>!” Danse roars, releasing her an inch only to slam her back into the wall, heavier this time. Something vicious, visceral, is dancing behind his eyes, so hot Hancock can feel it prickle beneath his skin. A voice tugs at the back of his mind, connecting the Institute uniform to their only damn lead on finding Nick, but his feet are rooted to the ground, watching Danse’s finger curl too eagerly around the trigger.</p>
<p>“They banished you!” Nora screams back, voice hoarse from where Danse’s hold has tightened across her airway. “They found out what you were and threw you to the dogs! Their most respected paladin, tossed out like trash because he’s a synth!”</p>
<p>“How in hell do you know-“ he starts, then cuts himself off with a terse shake of his head, dark hair spilling into his eyes. When he speaks again, his voice is barely above a whisper. “Do you have any idea how many innocents you slaughtered? There were <em>children</em> aboard that ship. Squires down at the airport. And you snuffed out their lives without a care. What’s to stop me doing the same to you?”</p>
<p>“I know your recall code,” Nora manages to gasp out. Hancock finally figures out how to move his limbs again then, gripping Danse’s arm to tug him ever so gently away from Nora, whispers urgently at him to <em>stay calm, baby</em>. Danse goes slowly, both arms flopping back to his sides like a marionette missing its strings. Nora sucks in a couple of huge breaths, colour slowly retreating from her face until she no longer resembles a freshly harvested beet, and reaches out to pluck her gun back from Danse, tucking it in the back of her waistband out of sight. Hancock has to fight the urge to pull Danse behind him, to shield him with his own smaller frame. A short string of letters would be all it takes; ain’t a whole lot he can do against that kind of ammo.</p>
<p>“Look, I just came to talk. I don’t want anyone else to get hurt. But there are more lives at stake here than you know,” Nora says. “I did what I had to do, to save my child. To save Mac’s child. Was the price too high? Fuck if I know. Some days it feels like it.”</p>
<p>“But throwing other people’s children into the firing line was acceptable?!” Danse spits. Fury is radiating from his entire body; he looks like he’s barely restraining himself from throwing a punch, or worse. And to be fair to him, he has a point.</p>
<p>“Until it happens to you, you have no right to judge me!” Nora cries. “You’re not a mother. You don’t know what it’s like.” Here she takes a deep breath, clenches and unclenches her fists, and finally raises her head to look them in the eye. “I came here because it’s gone too far. Father sent me to destroy the Railroad, and to bring Danse back to him. After the Railroad helped you escape in the Capital Wasteland, the Institute lost track of you until I took those files to the Brotherhood. Now Father’s got it in for them and any escapees who could provide an interesting case study-“</p>
<p>“Wait,” Danse says, holding up a hand, palm raised flat. His eyes are narrowed, accusatory. “What do you mean, helped me escape? I’ve never been in contact with any Railroad agent, aside from you.”</p>
<p>“How else do you think you got out of the Institute in the first place? They wiped your memory. Probably changed up your appearance, too. It’s standard procedure. Keeps everyone safe that way.”</p>
<p>She says it all so casually, but Hancock is immediately thrown back to that first morning, waking up to find Danse digging that blade into his arm with such intense focus. Then: still tangled in Hancock’s sheets, tear tracks making their way silently down his face. Those three words, uttered so quietly, voice breaking on the <em>synth</em>. He’s seen Danse lose his sense of self once already - he’s not sure either of them can handle that all over again.</p>
<p>“They… Why would I agree to-“</p>
<p>“Doubt you had much other choice. Synths are treated like slaves down there. When they’re not being pulled apart for testing, they’re cleaning spotless corridors or serving food to humans who still call them <em>it</em> and talk like they’re not in the room. I’m guessing a memory wipe and a face lift doesn’t sound too bad in comparison.”</p>
<p>Silence prevails. Hancock gives in to temptation and slips his hand into Danse’s, finds his palm damp. Eventually, Nora clears her throat, dropping her gaze back to the floor.</p>
<p>“I know this isn’t what you need to hear right now,” she says, “but I know where they’re keeping Nick. He’s been, uh. Asking for you.”</p>
<p>Her tone suggests she means <em>screaming</em>, but Hancock chooses not to dwell on that. And his voice is astonishingly steady when he speaks. “Look, sister, I’m no stranger to the Commonwealth. I might have grown up safe and sound in Diamond City, but leavin’ introduced me to all kinds of Wasteland scum. I’ve been betrayed six ways to Sunday, but <em>you</em>? You take the fuckin’ cake. Nick was your <em>friend</em>! He helped you find your son when nobody else would give you the time of day. Let that fucker into his head for you! And you, what, held him hostage down in your little underground fortress? Watched him get tortured? Turned him into one of your slaves?”</p>
<p>“It wasn’t like that, Hancock. I swear to Christ, it isn’t like that! I want to get him out of there, but he’s under 24/7 surveillance. There’s no feasible way for me to-“</p>
<p>“You achieved the impossible breakin’ in there in the first place. You sat on ice for two hundred years, you brought down the Brotherhood, you resurrected the damn Minutemen. Hell, I heard you took down the behemoth at Swan’s Pond. So don’t insult me by telling me it wasn’t fucking <em>feasible</em>.”</p>
<p>A beat passes. Two.</p>
<p>Then Danse opens his big damn mouth. “Let Valentine go, and I’ll accompany you back to the Institute. If they want a case study, they can have me.” He pauses, says, “Well? It’s what you came here for, isn’t it?”</p>
<p>“Fuck, no,” Hancock exhales. His stomach, which hasn’t stopped churning since he woke up, lurches again. “That ain’t happening, Dansey.”</p>
<p>“It’s my decision, John. If one of us deserves this, it surely isn’t Nick Valentine. I can’t run from karma for the rest of my- existence.” Hancock doesn’t miss him catching himself on the last word, choking a little cough, and he just wants to turn back time to when they were spooned together in bed, wake before Danse has a chance to go make coffee, and head this off alone.</p>
<p>“Nobody’s doing anything rash,” Nora interrupts. “And as touching as this display of self sacrifice is, I don’t think it’s going to be necessary.”</p>
<p>“Then what do you propose?” Danse asks, looking warily between them.</p>
<p>“I propose we burn the Institute to the ground.”</p>
<p>And fuck if it isn’t the best plan they got.</p>
<hr/>
<p>Railroad HQ isn’t what Danse was expecting.</p>
<p>Somehow he’d envisioned a sparkling setup in one of the old high rises, with Gen-1s striding around leaking wiring, the lilt of mechanical chirps filling the air. Instead he has to duck to avoid hitting his head on the rocky ceiling of a catacomb maze beneath a ruined church, squinting in the low light. It’s as good a hiding spot as any, he supposes.</p>
<p>His fingers squeezing his laser rifle a little too tight, Danse picks his way over the crumbling ground, gaze levelled on Nora’s back. This would be the perfect spot to dispose of them, to tie up loose ends. He knows Hancock is thinking the same, shotgun cocked and braced across his front. Nora, for her part, doesn’t bother to turn around, just keeps leading them down and down until they finally reach an opening in the wall.</p>
<p>And then the real HQ reveals itself. The room is bustling with activity and the bleep of monitors, but Danse can’t spot any obvious synths for the life of him. Hell, they could all be synths, for all he knows. Could all have had their memories stolen and be wandering around masquerading as humans-</p>
<p>He shakes his head to clear the thought. He isn’t that man anymore. He’s dealing with this, slowly and arduously but he’s <em>getting there</em>, with Hancock’s help. It hardly matters that the start of his life was a lie, that he could be a familiar face to half the people in this room and has no way of knowing it. That they likely strapped him down and probed his mind, erasing everything of his synth self, taking and taking and taking, leaving him a husk for the Brotherhood to fill back up.</p>
<p>He squeezes the rifle harder to stop the shiver running down his back. Wishes someone somewhere had installed eyes in the back of his head, in case anyone gets any similar ideas.</p>
<p>“Well, this is it,” Nora says, already making her way to a central table where a middle aged woman stands smoking. While Danse watches, she extinguishes the cigarette, burned down to a stub, and lights another, cupping her palms around the lighter flame in the draughty room.</p>
<p>“Desdemona, I brought some friends. They’re gonna help us infiltrate the Institute.”</p>
<p>“Fantastic,” the woman, Desdemona, grunts. She flips some papers on the desk, switches her cigarette to her other hand, scarcely sparing Danse or Hancock a second glance. “I need a few hours to assemble a team. You should go ahead of us, make sure everything’s finalised on your side. Get Z1-14 in place. Did you finish the tweaks to the new signal interceptor?”</p>
<p>“Almost. There’s a part missing, but it’s something Tom should be able to jury rig-“</p>
<p>“We can help with that,” Danse interjects. “We salvaged most of your plans from the airport, if there are gaps. A few parts, too. Hancock thought to bring them along.” He watches as John produces a wad of papers from a coat pocket, smoothing them out before offering them to Nora.</p>
<p>“Thank you. They should come in handy for the repairs,” Desdemona says, finally looking up. If she’s surprised by the sight of Danse’s huge frame filling the entryway or a ghoul in her midst, it doesn’t show on her face.</p>
<p>“There’s one more thing,” Nora says. “There’s someone else I need to get out. A synth. They’re keeping him down in the holding cells. It might… take a while.”</p>
<p>“Start working on it now. We’ll have an hour, tops, by the time we teleport in. You need to get your family and this synth to the rendezvous point so we can get as many synths to safety as possible. All non-combatants, too. This is a rescue mission first and foremost,” Desdemona says, still harried by her paper shuffling. “Godspeed, Whisper.”</p>
<p>Danse is half expecting Nora to salute, but she only offers a tense nod and makes her way back over to where they’re still hovering by the stairs. “You guys should wait here, teleport in with the rest of the agents. I’m sure they can find you something to keep your hands busy while I tie up a few loose ends. And… get Nick out. Somehow.”</p>
<p>“How is he?” Hancock asks, voice hushed.</p>
<p>“He’s… bearing up.”</p>
<p>“Don’t give me platitudes, sister. I ain’t some pre-war damsel needs savin’. Least you can do is tell me the truth. You owe us that much.”</p>
<p>“Fine,” Nora sighs. “He isn’t in the best shape, but he’s alive. They’re keeping him strapped to a table. There’ve been… experiments, I guess. Interrogations. But they haven’t done anything irreversible, at least not yet. Like I said before, he’s been asking for the two of you.”</p>
<p>It’s hardly the most comforting assessment, but Danse can see Hancock’s shoulders relax infinitesimally with the news. And Nick’s been asking after <em>him</em>? Beyond some form of higher function deterioration, he can hardly fathom <em>why</em>.</p>
<p>“I really have to go. I’ll see you both at the rendezvous.” With a final nervous look in Hancock’s direction, she turns and jogs out of sight, leaving them both temporarily unmoored. Danse takes the few remaining steps down into the room, finally holstering his weapon but wishing for his power armour all the same.</p>
<p>“I do hope you aren’t planning to stand in my way for the rest of the morning,” a voice to his left gripes. “If you’re clogging up my workspace, might as well make yourself useful. You can start by packing up medical supplies for the trip. Here.” Danse turns just in time to find a box filled to the brim with stimpaks, gauze, Med-X and various other implements thrust into his arms by a brown skinned man sporting a lab coat.</p>
<p>“Just split them all up into individual packs. It shouldn’t take too long. And then you can start on the weapons.”</p>
<p>“Affirmative,” Danse acknowledges, folding himself into a nearby chair to start dividing the kit up into small canvas bags. In his periphery he spies Hancock good-naturedly submitting to some sort of probing by a younger man with a gadget strapped to his head, and his heart squeezes with fondness.</p>
<p>“Are you Brotherhood?” the doctor asks bluntly from where he’s tapping away at a terminal, surprising Danse.</p>
<p>“I was. How do you- I mean, why do you ask?”</p>
<p>“I’ve never heard anyone else answer a command with <em>affirmative</em>. It’s a dead giveaway. Might want to think about switching it up if you don’t want people to guess immediately,” he tells him, scraping a hand through his short hair. “Fantastic. A Brotherhood bigot among our ranks. No matter how many times I warn Des against trusting outsiders…”</p>
<p>“I’m not with them anymore. I was… cast out.” He figures if there’s anywhere he can say this safely, it’s surrounded by synth sympathisers on their home turf. “They discovered my true identity. I’m a synth.”</p>
<p>The doctor’s eyebrows shoot up, and he lets out a low whistle. “And I thought I’d heard everything. A Brotherhood synth. That really is a new one. I’m Carrington.” At this he extends a hand for Danse to shake. That night, sprinting away from Boston Airport soaked wet through, reeling from the revelation and the terror in Haylen’s eyes, he’d have laughed in the face of anyone who said his admission would be met with a handshake, of all things.</p>
<p>Dumbly, he takes the proffered hand. Doesn’t quite know what to say, focuses instead on zipping up the bag in his lap and moving onto the next.</p>
<p>“That can’t have been easy,” Carrington says, filling the silence for him. “I assume you had no idea?”</p>
<p>“None,” Danse admits. “Honestly, I think your organisation knows more about it than I do. Nora tells me you’re the ones who pulled me out of the Capital Wasteland. Helped me… re-establish myself.”</p>
<p>“Ah, yes. That would have been Agent Watts. She was our main operative in D.C. The mem-wipes were much more thorough back then. They had to be. There were too many dangerous people around for synths to be aware of their true nature. Some nasty business in Rivet City… It depends on the circumstances, of course, but nowadays it’s really up to the individual. Glory over there chose to keep her memories of her time as a Courser. There are PTSD symptoms present, of course, but generally she fights better with her memories intact. Knows exactly what she’s fighting for, I suppose.”</p>
<p>Something tugs inside Danse’s chest - probably some sort of internal malfunction - at the words. He follows Carrington’s gaze to where a woman sporting a battered brown coat is sitting with her feet up on a desk, funnelling snack cakes into her mouth with one hand and flipping through a magazine with the other. Is that who he’d be if he knew who he was from the start?</p>
<p>“I wish I could remember,” he admits. “I feel like a chunk of me is missing. Like I can’t trust myself if I can’t trust my memories. Having no idea how much of your life was actually real is… disconcerting.”</p>
<p>“Thankfully, it isn’t a problem for many people. Many escaped synths will never find out they aren’t human. But yes, in your case I can see that it would be… uncomfortable.”</p>
<p>“Is there any way to access the missing parts?” He has to ask. Has to know one way or the other. And if the memories are there, if he sees himself as a mindless Institute slave, what then? Will it make him more whole? Danse honestly doesn’t know.</p>
<p>“For that, you’d be better asking Tinker Tom.” Carrington stands, stretches, and gives Danse a friendly pat on the shoulder. “The weapons stockpile is in the back room. Let me know when you’re finished and I’ll point you in the right direction.”</p>
<p>Danse lets him go.</p>
<hr/>
<p>Turns out co-operation is only fractionally less agonising than the alternative, Nick muses while they rip out another part of whatever passes for his brain these days. He’s still lying flat on his back, spread eagle on the gurney as he has been for so many weeks he can barely remember what sunlight looks like. Only now he’s answered all their inane questions, given them all he can give of himself, and it still isn’t enough.</p>
<p>“Removing component C12 now,” one bodiless voice above him announces. A sharp tug, pain pinballing between his temples, and his vision shorts out for a few seconds before flickering back to life in greyscale.</p>
<p>“Any effect on your higher processes, P1-02?” the other asks. Nick’s long since gathered that the numbers are supposed to refer to him. Honestly, he ain’t even sure why they’re asking at this point, not while he can hear the resounding thunks of his parts being dumped into a nearby specimen tray. Seems the curiosity of science knows no bounds.</p>
<p>Part of him wants to stay silent, one last act of defiance. A larger part wants to avoid the tip of that cattle prod being jammed back into his insides, so he says, “Well, I’m not sure how much use a colourblind detective’s gonna make, but I’m guessin’ that won’t be a problem for much longer.” He considers for a second, senses movement overhead and takes the cowardly route, stalls for time. “Hey, I never asked. Why 02? In my little codename there. You never did me the courtesy of mentioning.”</p>
<p>For a moment he isn’t sure they’ll dignify him with an answer, but he catches a shrug of shoulders and one of them, a woman, says, “You were the second prototype of your line.”</p>
<p>“Damn,” Nick lets out. “What happened to the other guy?”</p>
<p>The silence in the room thickens. Finally, the woman lets out a huff of air, clanking her tool down on the metal table. “Guess you really don’t remember. Huh. You, uh, both escaped. Got away in the middle of the night. 01 broke you out of your cubicle.” Nick doesn’t miss that she almost says <em>cell</em>, even with his mind reeling from the revelation. Escape? But he has memories of that dumpster, of dragging himself out of it with arms that weren’t his own. Nowhere in the memory is there room for another person, let alone another synth with a face as frightening as his own.</p>
<p>They go back to rummaging around in his head. The next yank loses feeling in one of his arms. He tells them so, then wonders if they did something to his verbal filter at the same time.</p>
<p>“Component Z42 should cut out its speech,” the guy announces. Spectacular. All those times back in the vault when Vinny had wished for a mute button, and here it is after all. “Any last queries?”</p>
<p>A second passes where Nick fools himself that they might be talking to him. Any last words before the guillotine falls, synth? He even opens his mouth to respond. And for that one second the thought of enduring this all silently is like a physical blow. He wants Hancock, more than anything, just wants the ghoul to take his hand while he goes through this, so he doesn’t have to die alone. Just wants arms around him, as ridiculous as it sounds coming from an old synth like him.</p>
<p>It had to happen sometime, Nick reasons. Just never thought it’d be as drawn out as all this, figured he’d go down in a blast of gunfire at the hands of some goon or another.</p>
<p>“Not on my end,” the woman replies. Nick feels gloved hands inside his head. “Can’t wait till this is over. I haven’t taken my lunch break yet.”</p>
<p>“Have you tried the new food supplement? Heard it tastes like brahmin shit.” A testing tug at another wire, a dull pain in his head that doesn’t go away until the guy releases his grip again, reaching for tweezers. “I’m tempted to break protocol and go aboveground just for some real food.”</p>
<p>“What I wouldn’t give for a good old fashioned steak-“</p>
<p>A crash, from somewhere beyond his feet. Then the clattering of metal on metal as tools are dropped in what Nick reads as shock. He’d pay a pretty penny to be able to raise his head right about now.</p>
<p>“What the fuck-“</p>
<p>“Put your hands up, and step the hell away from him right now.”</p>
<p>If Nick was holding a tool of his own, he’s pretty sure his would have clattered to the ground too. Because that’s John’s voice.</p>
<p>Maybe there is a synthetic afterlife after all.</p>
<p>“Hancock?” Nick manages, going for casual and not entirely succeeding. “That you?”</p>
<p>“Sure is, Nicky. Give us a sec to get these meatheads outta here and I’ll be right over,” John says, sounding similarly strained. There’s the sound of shuffling, that protective growl he knows to associate with Hancock in a fight. His guardian angels must be working overtime today.</p>
<p>Then the restraints at his wrists are loosening, and Nick moves his right arm for the first time in probably a month. His left sits useless at his side, refusing to obey his brain’s commands, but it’s still attached, so that’s something. Probably. Hancock frees his head next, allowing Nick up into a sitting position while he works on the buckles at his ankles.</p>
<p>Nick’s first glimpse of his body is… a lot. They’ve stripped most of the silicone off his legs, leaving rusting metal out in the open, and he wriggles his talon-like toes just to see if he still can. The plastic of his torso has never been in the best shape, but there’s a new crack across the middle, just over where his navel would be. He feels like a dog toy, thoroughly chewed and spit back out.</p>
<p>He’s also realising just how naked he is for probably the first time - they tossed out his trench coat and fedora upon dumping him here, then stripped off his shirt and trousers during the first round of tests. Nick feels the least like himself than he has in a long while - and keenly aware that his lover can see exactly what he’s lacking under the detective costume.</p>
<p>“Nicky,” John whispers, drawing closer until he can press their foreheads together, breathing hard. Nick swears he can hear the other man’s heartbeat racing in the quiet space. There are tears leaking silently down Hancock’s face, and Nick reaches up with his good arm to brush them away with a metal thumb, can’t resist pecking Hancock’s cheek while he’s at it. John twists his head to adjust the angle, presses their mouths together with an urgency that Nick feels in the very core of himself. He kisses back with everything he has, pouring the emotion of the last few weeks into the one focal point of Hancock’s lips. It feels like the other man wants to devour him whole. It’s still easily the gentlest touch he’s felt in a month.</p>
<p>“Showed up in the nick of time,” Nick tells him. “They were right in the middle of taking me apart when you burst in here.” He’s going for light, but his voice breaks partway through and if he had tear ducts, he’s pretty sure he’d be crying right along with John by now. “Thank you for coming.”</p>
<p>“I’d do anything for you, love,” John says, sincerely. Nick gasps in a breath that sounds suspiciously like a sob, muffles it with a trembling fist.</p>
<p>“How did you get in here?” he asks when he’s sure he can speak without his voice shaking.</p>
<p>“Long story,” Hancock says, huffing a dry laugh. The humour doesn’t reach his eyes. “Involving a lotta firepower and everyone’s favourite popsicle. The Railroad are out there putting down the bad guys right now.”</p>
<p>“Wow,” Nick breathes, impressed despite himself. “Didn’t think she had it in her.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, well. I wouldn’t exactly call this her Plan A,” Hancock says, and there’s a look in his dark eyes that Nick can’t quite decipher. He cups Nick’s face between his hands, bending a little to look him in the eyes. “Look, sweetheart, we have to get out of here. Can you walk? Nora’s setting a charge at the reactor. We have about a half hour before they ship out and leave us to go kaboom.”</p>
<p>“Christ, what is with that woman and explosions?” Nick gripes as he turns to dangle his legs off the gurney, gingerly testing his weight on both feet. His head swims with the sudden change in gravity. “I can probably make it. Might slow you down some, though. I understand if you wanna forge ahead.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, I really came all the way down here to untie you just to leave your synthetic ass.” Hancock rolls his eyes. “Think again, bucko. If you aren’t feeling so good, I’m sure Danse can carry you. Or I could - brought enough Buffout to supply an army - but then you’d miss out on my frankly beautiful shootin’ skills.” He tucks an arm under Nick’s to help him stand, levers them both into a quasi embrace.</p>
<p>“Danse is here?” He can’t decide whether he’s truly surprised or not. Ain’t likely Danse would let Hancock risk his hide alone, not after everything. But with that timer ticking down…</p>
<p>“He’s holding them off outside. Wanted to give us a few minutes to ourselves.” John begins to help him limp over to the door, but Nick halts him.</p>
<p>“Wait a sec. Bastards pulled a few bits outta my head before you got here. Don’t wanna leave anything irreplaceable behind.” Nick plucks the bucket of parts up off the floor, peering warily down into it. A gruesome collection of half-rusted, lightly toasted brain components stares back up at him, along with a few jagged sections of what used to be his skull.</p>
<p>“All of you’s irreplaceable, sunshine,” Hancock says in a gravelly whisper, tugging him closer still. “You ready to get out of here?”</p>
<p>“God, yeah,” Nick tells him. He winces as they head for the door, pain lancing through him as his body is jostled with each step, but they make it, and sure enough Danse is standing guard with his laser rifle across his muscled chest. Nick feels himself shrink a little more in the big man’s presence.</p>
<p>“We need to move,” are the first words out of Danse’s mouth. They seem to rise unbidden, because the next minute he’s looking Nick over with something like concern in his eyes, one hand jutting out in an aborted attempt to touch his shoulder and stopping just short. “Nick. Are you… alright?”</p>
<p>“I’m just dandy, doll,” Nick tells him.</p>
<p>“I’m sorry. Stupid question.” Danse looks abashed, breaking cover to glance down the hall in search of hostiles before he turns back to them. “Hallway’s clear. We have approximately twenty-two minutes to reach the rendezvous.” He pauses, meeting John’s eye for a second before turning back to Nick. “Would you, ah, object to being carried? It’s a fair way back.”</p>
<p>Nick considers it. Looks down at himself again, clad out in the new fuzzy grey of his vision, all ragged silicone and chipped plastic and exposed metal parts. A formless mound where his privates should be. Wonders how either of them can bear to look at him.</p>
<p>“Fine by me, Danse,” he lies. Danse holsters his gun, crouches, while John takes the bucket of parts without flinching to help him climb aboard the other man’s back. Nick arranges his good arm around Danse’s neck, tucking the floppy one in between their bodies, and startles when Danse’s hands go to wrap carefully around his ankles.</p>
<p>“Comfortable enough?” Danse asks. “We can try something else if not.”</p>
<p>Nick imagines himself hoisted into a bridal carry and has to suppress a humiliated shudder. Christ, the indignity. “Don’t you worry about me,” he grits out. “Best we get out of here, before the whole place goes up, though. Hey, you trust me enough to lend me that rifle? I can pick some of ‘em off while you run.”</p>
<p>Danse hands it over without question, thumbing the safety off and pressing it tight into Nick’s right hand where it brushes his collarbone. He isn’t sure how steady his aim’s gonna be, but anything has to be better than nothing against an entire synth army.</p>
<p>They start to move. Every step is still painful, but Danse treads gently enough that Nick can ignore it, for the most part. They travel through a maze of underground corridors and take a brief ride in an elevator, then wind through a few more brightly lit chrome rooms filled with plush Queen beds and fancy showers. Living quarters, probably. Even the bad guys need to sleep sometime.</p>
<p>“We should be able to avoid most of the opposition this way,” Danse hisses in explanation as he presses them up against a wall to avoid detection by a few fleeing scientists. Hancock shushes him, darts out lightning fast to dispatch a Gen-1 with the knife from his boot.</p>
<p>“Alright. Coast’s clear,” he whispers. “You still okay there, Nicky?”</p>
<p>Nick suspects he’s looking a bit worse for wear, but he manages to nod. “Just keep going. You can fuss over me once we’re outta this mess.”</p>
<p>“Hang on a minute,” John says, signalling for them to halt. He strides over to a nearby wardrobe, starts pulling clothes out by their hangers until he finds what he’s apparently looking for - a fluffy white robe and a pair of soft cream-coloured pyjama bottoms.</p>
<p>“Figured you’d wanna preserve your modesty. Never understood it myself, but you were always finicky like that,” he tells Nick, who’s suddenly seized with the most intimate feeling of being <em>known</em>. An almost overwhelming rush of love for the ghoul passes over him as he’s deposited carefully onto the floor and helped into the clothes, Hancock’s molten fingers tugging the lapels of the robe close together and securing the tie at his waist. Nick steps into the soft pants himself, tugging them up to cover himself before allowing himself to be picked up again.</p>
<p>Danse adjusts Valentine’s weight on his back, and for a moment his hand brushes the inside of Nick’s knee over the sweats and… lingers there. Doesn’t quickly retract his fingers or wipe them off on his trousers. In fact, Nick would swear his grip contracts once, administering a comforting squeeze before they’re off again.</p>
<p>There’s a firefight going on in the atrium, Railroad agents spread out in a loose formation on the lawns and a huddle of white Institute uniforms by the doors. And no way past, not without all three of them taking an energy ray to the chest. Nick taps at Danse’s chest a couple times until the other man gets the message and lowers him to the ground, shakes the tension out of his shoulders and retrieves a pistol from his hip.</p>
<p>“Here, switch with me,” Nick offers, handing him back the rifle. The pistol feels better in his grip anyway, and his aim doesn’t falter as he tests it out in the safety of their hiding spot. He’s half afraid they’ll tell him to stay behind while they work themselves into the fray, but Hancock at least reads the warning signs on Nick’s face and lets him advance without comment.</p>
<p>“At least let us go first,” John murmurs as they edge stealthily along one white wall, keeping the hostiles in plain sight. “Didn’t come this far to see you taken out by one of their pulse grenades.”</p>
<p>Nick acquiesces, lets Hancock and Danse lead a few steps ahead. The steady burst of energy fire erupts from their left and Nick automatically sinks into a crouch, putting a stupid amount of strain on his freshly liberated toes. Shit. He isn’t sure how long he’ll last at the mercy of the elements without his assorted synthetic coverings, even disregarding how spooky he looks without them.</p>
<p>They worked well as a team back on that expedition to rescue Danse’s pal, and their luck holds here too. Danse takes out the distant enemies with staccato blasts of his rifle while Hancock keeps the closer ones at bay, shotgun smoking in his hands, and Nick picks off the ones they both miss. Thankfully there ain’t many that slip the net, and Nick still has a couple bullets left by the time the remaining synths lie smouldering at their feet.</p>
<p>“We have to go,” Danse says suddenly, catching sight of the time on a digital clock up on the atrium wall. “<em>Now</em>.“</p>
<p>“How long do we have?” Hancock asks, already gathering Nick’s bucket back up again and hopping to his feet.</p>
<p>“Less than five minutes. We need to take the main elevator or we aren’t going to make it.”</p>
<p>“We’ll be sittin’ ducks,” John warns. “Or fish in a barrel. Probably the fish.”</p>
<p>“There’s no other choice,” Danse tells him, hoisting Nick up onto his back again. “Move, John, now.”</p>
<p>“I’m real sorry about this, fellas,” Nick says as they hustle for the elevator. Danse jabs the doors shut with the butt of his gun and they start to rise steadily upwards “You shoulda-“</p>
<p>“If that sentence ends in anything but <em>hurried your asses up</em>, don’t bother,” Hancock gripes. “I’m just sorry we took so long, Nicky.”</p>
<p>“It’s a miracle you came at all,” Nick admits. “Thought I was a goner for sure.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, well, we still might be,” Hancock says. A second later real bullets are piercing the glass walls of the elevator, sending them all ducking for cover. Danse drops Nick and moves to shield them both with his body, rifle up and balanced in the meat of his shoulder. A hail of gunfire rattles around them, a grunt of pain erupting from Danse, who falls to one knee but keeps shooting.</p>
<p>And then they’re up and out of it, their little glass chute emerging in a dimly lit computer bank, and at the end of the hall stand Nora and MacCready, engaged in a fight of their own with a few stragglers.</p>
<p>“Shit. Danse, you still with us?” Nick shouts over the commotion, helping Hancock drag the big man into cover. “We made it. We’re gonna get you out of here.”</p>
<p>“I’m fine,” Danse hisses, but the wound above his knee looks pretty bad, chugging out blood at an alarming rate. “Hardly felt it.”</p>
<p>“That’ll be the adrenaline for ya,” Hancock tells him, fumbling in his pack for a stimpak. Danse lets out a wail of pain when he injects it, thumps a fist on the ground for emphasis while the wound knits itself slowly back together. “You want Med-X? Or, uh, I got some whiskey?”</p>
<p>“A half vial, please,” Danse says. Nick’s faintly impressed. The last time they were in this situation together Danse refused the chems until the bitter end, and here he is wised up on dosages. He offers his arm for John to administer the painkiller, head lolling in relief when it’s done. Hancock really is rubbing off on him.</p>
<p>The ruckus around them has ceased, and Hancock takes it as his cue to lean out of cover. “We’re good. Are my two favourite people in the Commonwealth okay to move?” His innocent grin almost makes up for the snark, as Nick prises himself up off the floor and Danse does the same at John’s other side.</p>
<p>“Shut it, you. Until you’re also the walking wounded, you don’t get to judge us,” Nick tells him. “Speaking of, how come it’s never you sportin’ the injury? Mr. Lucky over here?”</p>
<p>“I’ve been called slippery before now,” Hancock replies with a wink. “All by idiots, course. Ah, dead idiots, now.”</p>
<p>Nick takes the hint with a chuckle. Somehow all three of them are still standing. Somehow they’ve reached the teleporter outta here, somehow they’re gonna make it out of the Institute intact. Hancock’s fingers find Nick’s in the low light, and they amble slowly over to the others.</p>
<p>MacCready’s set up a sniper’s nest behind a row of machinery and is busy reloading his rifle, eyes peeled for oncoming hostiles, but Nora has already tossed her gun to the side and is scrubbing sweat from her brow. She winces when she sees them approach, takes a few hesitant steps over. Two sets of eyes peer curiously around her trouser legs as she moves, following like shadows.</p>
<p>“Hey, Valentine. Glad you made it,” MacCready calls while she fumbles for the right words. Nick gives him a lazy two-fingered salute and a grin, relief still seeping over him. He can’t believe they’ve made it, keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop.</p>
<p>“I’m so sorry, Nick,” Nora says finally. “I should’ve done this a lot sooner.”</p>
<p>“You did what you had to,” Nick tells her. “Thanks for hitting the brakes on the Institute’s shady masterplan, though. And hey, who’s this? You can come out, we won’t bite ya.”</p>
<p>Shaun is the first one to step around Nora to get a better look at Nick, blinking oswlishly up at him with eyes so like his mother’s it throws him briefly off guard. Duncan hangs back, thumb in his mouth, glances timidly at his father across the room. Suddenly Nick knows exactly why Nora did all of this.</p>
<p>“Are you a synth like me?” Shaun asks. Nick had no idea how much he knew about his true origin, but looks like Nora has had time to clue him in.</p>
<p>“Sure am, kid,” Nick says, crouching so they’re at eye level and trying to conceal his wince. “Don’t reckon my hardware’s quite as fancy as yours, though.”</p>
<p>“I think you look cool,” Shaun admits. “Mom told me you’re a detective. Do you solve crimes?”</p>
<p>“Sometimes I do, sure. Other times I help find things that’ve gone missing. Or help rescue people when <em>they</em> go missing. Hey, soon as we’re outta here I’ll tell ya all about my last case, how’s that sound? Your mom helped me track down some old treasure, took us all over the city…”</p>
<hr/>
<p>It isn’t that Nick doesn’t trust Amari to piece him back together, he tells himself. Just that John’s hands are steady from the Jet, and he doesn’t want to waste any more of the woman’s time, and he has a spare sleuth outfit at Hancock’s place. Besides, Amari’s busy with the steady stream of injured synths emerging from the Institute, plus overseeing surplus memory wipes for the Railroad.</p>
<p>So they head back to the Old State House. It’d been a long, quiet trek back to Goodneighbor, with him strung up on Danse’s back and Hancock leading the way, tricorn pulled low over his eyes against the setting sun and still blooming mushroom cloud in the distance. Nick had fallen into something close to a slumber - or as close as he can get, anyway - lulled by the steady tread of Danse’s footfalls and Hancock humming an old Diamond City Radio song around a cigarette.</p>
<p>He’s more awake by the time Danse has lugged him all the way up the spiral stairs and into Hancock’s bedroom, depositing him gently on the edge of the bed. Blinks a few times to get his internal processors firing on all cylinders, does his best to stifle a yawn.</p>
<p>“Should probably take a look inside that head of yours, Nicky,” John says, already rattling a tin of mentats and popping a couple into his mouth, kicking his boots haphazardly across the room. “Don’t want you missin’ anything important.”</p>
<p>“Sure, doll,” Nick replies. He unwinds his fingers where they’ve clenched too tight together, reminds himself that this is just Hancock, that he’s home and safe and any hands in his wires will be gentle. “You think you can figure out what goes where?”</p>
<p>Danse clears his throat at this, says quietly, “I can.”</p>
<p>Doesn’t take a genius to figure out how he knows. Nick has tracked down enough missing people to know some of them ended up in the Brotherhood’s clutches, has seen the scattered synthetic parts for himself.</p>
<p>“I can instruct John on where to reconnect your components,” he offers quickly. “Or, if you’d rather I didn’t interfere, I can make myself scarce. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”</p>
<p>Thing is, he sounds sincere. And Nick’s hardly too proud to admit he’s missed the big fella, in spite of everything. More than once his mind took him back to the three of them jostling for space in front of Hancock’s mirror, and before that, tangled loosely together on the bed, his hands in Danse’s hair. Made him wonder how it might’ve all gone down, before it all went to shit instead.</p>
<p>“It’s fine, Danse,” Nick tells him. “I trust you. Don’t mind the two of you getting all up in my wires, s’long as you don’t mind getting your hands dirty.”</p>
<p>“I won’t hurt you,” Danse says, as though Nick didn’t already know.</p>
<p>They settle him in a chair for better access, with probably too many cushions under his butt and behind his back, and Nick feels - not for the first time - like an old man. But it sure beats that metal gurney, and when John tips his head forward he’d almost call his grip <em>reverent</em>, not brusque and uncaring, which makes a nice change.</p>
<p>Danse murmurs instructions to Hancock as they pluck components from the bucket and begin to reattach them. A couple times they have to brush dust or worse off a brain part, and a few are discarded, notes for essential replacements jotted down on a nearby pad of paper. It’s only then that Nick spies the blueprints and sketches scattered across the desk and the floor, all covered in John’s loopy scrawl and what he presumes is Danse’s tighter handwriting, letters slanted and cramped together. While they’re distracted, he reaches out with his working arm and snags the nearest paper for a closer look. It’s a drawing of Nora’s signal interceptor, with some parts labelled and others covered in question marks. Underneath John’s written <em>CIT Ruins?? </em>and <em>Courser chip?</em></p>
<p>“You were trying to get to me,” Nick says, the truth slowly dawning. “All this… all for me?”</p>
<p>Hancock pauses in his ministrations to peer around at the paper in Nick’s hand, forehead tugging down into a frown. “‘Course we were, sunshine. Wasn’t much use in the end, though. Railroad had it all figured out a hell of a lot quicker.”</p>
<p>“Doesn’t matter,” Nick tells him, words slurring slightly as Danse reconnects another wire, thumb stroking over the nape of his neck as a distraction. “The two of you made impressive progress. I mean it - thank you. Both of you. I wouldn’t have blamed either of you for giving up on me.”</p>
<p>“Never,” Hancock vows. He presses a kiss to Nick’s forehead before he retreats, calloused fingers joining Danse’s once again inside his skull. “We’re almost done here, Nicky. Just a couple more tweaks and-“</p>
<p>Three things happen simultaneously. Nick’s vision blooms back in glorious technicolour, feeling returns to his left arm, and a spark of pleasure so strong it bucks him out of his chair rolls over his entire body.</p>
<p>“What the ever-loving <em>fuck</em> was that?” Hancock asks, wringing out his hands where he must’ve caught the brunt of the electrical current. Nick can’t find the words to answer him, just collapses back in the chair gasping for breath he doesn’t need, metal fingers clawing at the armrests.</p>
<p>“Nick? Are you alright?” It’s Danse asking this time, stock still, up to the wrists in Nick’s parts. “Did something short-circuit?”</p>
<p>“I, uh,” Nick tries. “Uh.”</p>
<p>“Something must’ve gone wrong with his vocal unit. I’ll try unattaching the previous component and replace the wire-“</p>
<p>“No!” Nick cries. “It ain’t that. I just, uh. Well. It’s a bit awkward to explain.”</p>
<p>“<em>Oh</em>.” He can sense Hancock’s smug grin without seeing it, wants to wipe it off his face with a kiss but doesn’t have the energy to move.</p>
<p>“What? ‘Oh’, what?” Danse is saying, and it’s sweet, really. “Did we hurt you?”</p>
<p>“Oh, I think we did the opposite.” Hancock smirks, one hand on his hip, looking cocky as all hell. “That felt good, huh Nicky?”</p>
<p>“Yeah,” Nick admits in a whisper. “Real good.”</p>
<p>Danse makes the connection at last, a furious blush rising up his neck. He retracts his hands quickly from Nick’s head, tucks them into the pockets of his jeans and glares menacingly down at the floor.</p>
<p>“Want us to do it again?” Hancock asks, damn smirk still fixed in place.</p>
<p>“I ain’t so sure Danse wants to get all tangled up in an old synth like me, doll…”</p>
<p>“Look,” Danse starts. He wipes his palms on his jeans, exhales sharply, tipping his face skyward as he moves to stand in front of Nick. Then he sinks to his knees, takes another deep breath, and meets Nick’s eyes. For the first time, Nick notices the scar at his eyebrow, how his dark hair has lightened a little in the sun. How pretty he looks. “Cards on the table. Forgive me for not saying this sooner, but I… didn’t know how to, then. Nick, I have feelings for you. For the two of you. It’s not, you’re not- Ah. I know I said - and did - some awful things, and I understand if that’s not something you can move past. But if you can, and you’d like to try, then… I would too, is what I’m trying to say. I’m not disgusted by you, or whatever you’re thinking. I’m attracted to you. And I care about you, a lot.”</p>
<p>It’s a lot to take in, and for a long moment Nick isn’t quite sure what to say in response.</p>
<p>“L-like I said, if you want me to give the two of you some space, I’ll absolutely do that,” Danse stammers, straightening up and scrubbing a hand through his hair. “I want you to be comfortable, after everything. That’s what’s important here.”</p>
<p>All the while, Hancock’s smiling dopily between them like all the answers have been obvious all along, and Nick supposes that for once they are. “I’m attracted to you, too,” he tells Danse, daring to reach up and touch the big man’s elbow. “And I care about you, both of you, obviously. Thanks for being the brave one, Danse.”</p>
<p>“Would you like us to finish the repairs before we, ah, retire?” he asks, jerking a look over at the rumpled bed. “I think I’ve replaced everything essential. Though your balance might be a little off until we can acquire a replacement gyro.”</p>
<p>“Y’know what, I think I’ll be just fine.”</p>
<p>“That’s… good,” Danse says. He extends a hand to pull Nick to his feet, and Nick revels a little in the fact that he doesn’t flinch at his exposed parts.</p>
<p>“There’s no pressure, Nick,” Hancock reminds him. “If all this is too sudden, or if you’re still hurtin’, or if you’re just not in the mood. We got time.”</p>
<p>“I think I want you to make me feel good,” Valentine admits. “I think after everythin’, a little pleasure is exactly what the doctor ordered.”</p>
<p>They both lead him over to the bed, like he’s some fragile maiden who might not be able to make it by himself. And who knows, they might be right. After the various shocks of the past few hours, Nick reckons he’d be unsteady on his feet even if it wasn’t for the missing gyro. Hancock crawls up on the mattress first, arranges the mound of pillows so they can smush up comfortably together, then captures Nick’s lips in a kiss before he can say another word, one hand slipping around to cradle the back of his neck. Tender hands help slip the robe off his shoulders, loosen the bottoms at the waist.</p>
<p>“Can’t believe we could’ve been getting you off all this time,” he murmurs. His fingers quest higher, until they’re at the opening in Nick’s skull, stroking oh so gently at the edge of the first wire. A tingling sensation spreads outwards, stealing whatever answer he was going to give.</p>
<p>Danse is a warm presence at his back, albeit a little shier than John. One large arm winds around Nick’s waist, tugging him closer into the solidity of his body, twining their hands together. He lowers his head to litter kisses across the silicone covering of Nick’s neck, little contented noises escaping him. Even in his half delirious state, Valentine can feel Danse's growing hardness underneath him.</p>
<p>And Christ, if someone had told Nick a couple months ago that this is where he’d be, he’d have laughed them out of the Commonwealth.</p>
<p>John’s fingers have grown bolder, and now they give the closest wire a little squeeze, making something seize low in Nick’s abdomen. Hancock’s nails graze along the wire, skimming the plastic surface with a teasing touch that elicits a groan from Nick’s throat, fizzles along the synthetic nerves in his arms and legs.</p>
<p>“Can you come like this?” John wonders aloud. “Just from our fingers, like this?”</p>
<p>“I, ah. Think so,” Nick stutters. “Better if you- Could you just- Ah!” He can’t get the words out, takes John’s hand and places it at the hole in his neck where he wants it. Some sensitive wires in there, probably. Human Nick always liked having his neck kissed, anyhow, and if the flutter of Danse’s lips are anything to go by-</p>
<p>“Christ, that’s perfect. Little harder, John, if you would-“ Hancock obeys immediately, plucking two wires at once and twisting them together just a little. It’s so different from having electric currents shoved unceremoniously into his body, from wires being yanked carelessly loose. They’re being so gentle with him, and for a second Nick is sure he doesn’t deserve it.</p>
<p>“You doin’ okay there, Nicky?” Hancock asks, sensing a shift in the air. “You want to stop?”</p>
<p>“No,” Nick says, but his voice emerges thick with emotion. “Don’t stop. Love you. Both of you.”</p>
<p>“We love you too.” This from Danse, who has taken up a longer wire at a newly exposed spot at Nick’s shoulder and is twirling it lightly between his index finger and thumb. His grip slides to the very edge, where it connects with mechanical sinew, and this sensation is sharper, makes him keen. “I’m glad you’re okay, Nick. You’re safe with us.”</p>
<p>Inch by inch, they take him apart, pleasure contorting Nick’s body as he writhes against the sheets. What begins as a phantom ache where his genitals would be spreads like wildfire across his torso and into his thighs, toes tensing with the onslaught of feeling.</p>
<p>“I’m gonna- think I’m almost-“ he attempts. Hancock makes a shushing noise, free hand skimming across Nick’s neck and down his arm.</p>
<p>“Come for us,” he breathes into Nick’s skin. “We’ve got you.”</p>
<p>Nick does, so violently that his body jerks up off the bed, vision whiting out at the edges. Vaguely he knows his cooling fans have kicked into full force, can hear them roaring in his ears, but he can’t do a damn thing to help the process along except pant little puffs of steam out of his mouth and nose. Probably looks freaky enough, but he hardly cares, wave after wave of orgasm wracking his frame.</p>
<p>After, Nick lies trembling between them. Hancock presses the back of his hand to Nick’s forehead like he’s checking for a fever. “Scared us for a sec there, sunshine. That as good as it looked?”</p>
<p>“Better,” Nick tells him. “So much better than anything I’ve ever felt in this body. Anything I thought I’d ever feel again.”</p>
<p>“I’m glad,” Hancock whispers, snuggling down beside him. “Always wanted to make you feel as good as you make me.”</p>
<p>Danse picks Nick’s right hand up off the bed, and before he can talk himself out of it presses his lips against each metal knuckle, making something in Nick’s chest contract with feeling. When he’s done, he squirms under the blankets and works to cover the three of them up. Nick returns the favour with a sloppy kiss to the stubble at his jaw, marvelling in the fact that he’s allowed this, allowed the two of them curled up beside him.</p>
<p>“Don’t you two wanna get off?” he asks when he thinks he can muster the energy to help. “Don’t abstain on my account.”</p>
<p>“Got plenty of time for that later,” John reminds him. “This was about you, sweetheart. Just wanted to make you feel good.”</p>
<p>“Well, you certainly did that,” Nick chuckles, burrowing a little deeper under the covers. The orgasm has frayed his nerves and he’s suddenly glad of the blanket, not quite wanting to face the reality of his new self. He slips his spidery hands into the protection of their new cocoon because he doesn’t want to look at them, then remembers how Danse had met his eyes when he brought Nick’s fingers to his mouth, how easily they’d both taken Nick’s hand to help him or comfort him or lead him, so gently, where he was wanted.</p>
<p>He draws them back out into the open. Regards them with a critical eye. Like he can sense Nick’s thoughts, John plucks the hand closest to him up and cradles it to his own chest, eyes fluttering shut, lips caught on a sleepy smile.</p>
<p>“Reckon I’ll need to get these seen to,” Nick says, trying and failing for casual. “S’like having two little robotic arachnids on the end of my arms.”</p>
<p>“I think they’re cute,” Hancock tells him around a yawn. “Though goin’ by all that fixin’ you already do to your right, reckon it might be safer to get you some new silicone to keep the dust bunnies out.”</p>
<p>“Got some spare parts back at the agency,” Nick remembers. “If you two are up for a stroll over to Diamond City sometime. Probably a gyro or two in there, as well.”</p>
<p>“Now Nicky, you know I’d go anywhere with you. But you two might have to sneak this ghoul past security. Probably time I paid my ol’ brother a visit, too.”</p>
<p>“Your brother?” Danse asks, squirming into a sitting position so he can discern Hancock’s expression in the dying lamplight. “I didn’t know you had one.”</p>
<p>“Yup. Everyone’s least favourite mayor,” Hancock tells him. “Guy’s responsible for tossing all the ghouls out of Diamond City. You’d’ve probably got on with him, once upon a time. <em>Mankind for McDonough</em> was his election slogan.”</p>
<p>Danse shudders between them, shrinking back into the pillows a little. “I’m sorry,” he begins to say.</p>
<p>“Nah, don’t apologise. What’s done is done and all. ‘Sides, you had the decency to change. That fucker’s still up in his ivory tower lookin’ down on the rest of us. You should’ve seen the number of families he uprooted. How many ended up dead ‘cause of him and his stupid legislation."</p>
<p>“It’s hard to believe you grew up in Diamond City,” Danse muses. “I can’t imagine you there. Goodneighbor suits you much better.”</p>
<p>Hancock laughs, a familiar throaty sound that makes Nick want to snuggle in closer. So he does. “Oh, I remember it well,” he says. “Remember you skipping school as a rowdy teenager to come pester me about my cases. Remember when you almost drowned your brother in the water supply. And, oh Christ, the first time you got high, and you didn’t want your parents to find out, so you hid up on the roof? And I had to tend your broken leg so no-one’d find out you fell off sky-high on Jet?”</p>
<p>“You swore you’d never mention that again!” Hancock grumbles, reaching over to poke Nick’s side. “Traitor.”</p>
<p>“What he doesn’t want you to know, Danse, is that he started out a lightweight just like you,” Nick smirks. “One canister of Jet and he was busy falling off roofs and yelling at crows.”</p>
<p>“Are we gonna just forget about the time you lost your hat and refused to leave the agency without it? Got so mad you ended up snatchin’ a helmet off of security until you found it again.”</p>
<p>“And we both know who took it in the first place, don’t we?” Nick gripes, but they’re both laughing, and Danse is looking befuddled between the two of them, shaking his head in exasperation, and it feels <em>good</em>.</p>
<p>“I wish I’d known you then,” he says when they’ve quietened down.</p>
<p>“Nah, you don’t,” John says, reaching up to cup Danse’s cheek, stroking the skin there with a soppy look on his face. “I was a real little shit back then. Helluva lot more handsome, though. And Valentine was even grumpier than he is now.”</p>
<p>“You’re still very handsome, doll,” Nick soothes, because he is, and he deserves to hear it.</p>
<p>“It’s true,” Danse agrees. Hancock practically <em>preens</em> in their shared bed, batting his eyelashes at them, posing like a pre-war pinup, theirs for the taking and touching and kissing.</p>
<p>“Flatterers, both of ya,” he says, grinning. “I’m glad we’re here. Finally.”</p>
<p>“Me too,” Nick tells him.</p>
<p>“Me, three,” Danse chimes in. The three of them exchange a look, staying stoic for a second before bursting into simultaneous giggles.</p>
<p>And it’s good. Perfect, even, Nick thinks as he takes them both in and the gas light finally runs out of oil, and then there’s more laughing and squirming and lips on skin as the day slips properly into night.</p>
<hr/>
<p>When Nora screams herself awake, she can still feel the imprint of the detonator clenched in both hands. Remembers her own strength deploying it, remembers the distant impression of heat on her cheeks and a mushroom cloud rising above the city once more.</p>
<p>Had it transported her back to the vault, all those months ago? Back to running frantically after Nate as he crested the hill with Shaun in his arms, back to the stunned faces of their neighbours, back to the clanking elevator transporting them deep into the earth? She isn’t sure - more likely she was too stunned to remember much of anything.</p>
<p>That day, she never thought she’d see daylight again. The official line was that they’d be released as soon as the radiation cleared, but who the hell knew when that would be? She’d imagined raising her baby in a vault full of strangers, away from natural light, trapped in close quarters with her husband and wanted to run back out into the fray.</p>
<p>She can admit it, now. Admit that she needs the freedom and the pulse of adrenaline, only now it comes from a gun heavy in her hands rather than a hefty legal textbook and her barrister’s wig. Comes with MacCready at her side, in his element peering through a scope, and the pelting of her own feet beneath her, and the come-down in some ratty house or other, panting heavily into his bare chest.</p>
<p>And now she’s free, again. Sort of.</p>
<p>They’re back in Sanctuary. The kids are sleeping two doors over under the watchful supervision of Preston and Curie. Nick is out and safe with Hancock and Danse, apparently - and she really didn’t see that one coming - back in Goodneighbor or Diamond City or wherever else they’ve holed up. Duncan’s boils are all gone, and today she saw him smile wider than he ever has before.</p>
<p>It was worth it, she thinks.</p>
<p>Now MacCready pulls her tighter into his arms, shushes her until she quiets. “It’s okay, Nora. You’re safe. Everyone’s safe. You’re okay.”</p>
<p>Is she? Will she ever be able to forgive herself for everything she's done? <em>Should</em> she?</p>
<p>“I left him there, Mac,” she tells him, dragging her hands through her hair. “I shot him and I left him there-“</p>
<p>MacCready hums a noise deep in his throat, rearranges the shabby blanket around them both so she can breathe a little easier. “I know he was your son, Nora. So don’t hate me for this, okay? But I… I don’t feel bad for him. The guy wasn’t good. Jeez, he was evil, probably. What he was doing, to the people he had killed and replaced? To all the synths down there? To Nick, to Shaun? To us! He didn’t deserve any better. You were at least merciful enough to shoot him in the head first. Most people woulda let him burn.”</p>
<p>“I could’ve got him out. Given him a second chance. I know he didn’t have long left, but it could have been long enough for us to...”</p>
<p>“To what, to bond? He had his chance, Nora. He could’ve left all those people alone. But he didn’t. Besides, you really think he wouldn’t get his synths to build him a new empire up here?” He says it so simply, like there’s no other answer, and it’s enough for Nora to shake her head and laugh. Enough for her to press a kiss against his jaw, and for his hand to slip lower into her waistband, teasing, until Nora flips them both to allow him better access. He takes his time, exploring her with skilled fingers and then an equally skilled mouth, relaxed in a way he never was back in the Institute. She bucks up into him, cries muffled by the pillow, and when he finally thrusts inside her she can’t help that his name escapes her lips on the edge of a whine.</p>
<p>“I love you,” she tells him after, when they’re curled up together and panting. “Thank you for sticking with me, through all this… shit.”</p>
<p>“I’d do it all over again,” Mac says. “You gave me a chance when no-one else would. Helped me take out the Gunners. Risked life and limb for a kid you’d never even met. I owe you both our lives, Nora."</p>
<p>“You don’t owe me anything,” Nora says. “All that you’ve given up for me? We’re even. ‘Sides, I didn’t do it for whatever tally you have going in your head. Did it ‘cause I love you. And Duncan, now, too.”</p>
<p>“We’ll work it out, y’know? A schedule for babysitting. We have enough people here who I’m sure’ll be more than willing to help out. So we can still slip away whenever we need to, when we need to clear our heads or take out some super mutants or go save the Commonwealth all over again.”</p>
<p>He’s right, probably. Curie was instantly taken with the boys, and Preston can’t say no after everything she’s done for the Minutemen. And Nick had Shaun wrapped around his little finger with his old case stories, and then there’s Codsworth and Piper and, hell, Hancock too, probably. If he ever forgives her. But honestly, who can resist Duncan’s big blue eyes and Shaun’s enthusiasm for gadgets?</p>
<p>“I know we will,” Nora sighs. Then, remembering, she dangles an arm off the bed to rummage for the file she stashed there earlier. “Oh, hey, I almost forgot. Took this from Father’s quarters. It’s Duncan’s file. I didn’t open it, I thought you’d probably want to read it first…”</p>
<p>She’d only caught sight of it at the last minute, after she’d put a bullet in her son’s head and gone to scour his terminal. Figured it could hold pertinent information about his treatment, just in case something goes wrong down the line. Feels sick just thinking about it.</p>
<p>Nora realises she’s still holding the file, that Mac is just looking at it with something like apprehension on his face. Feels herself frowning in response.</p>
<p>“Sorry. If you’d rather we get rid of it-“</p>
<p>“It’s not that,” Mac says, drawing in a deep breath. When he continues he won’t look her in the eye. “Nora, honey. I hate to break it to you, but I, uh. I can’t actually read."</p>
<p>It’s so far from what she was expecting him to say - that’s she’s prying into something that doesn’t concern her, that she should have left those bad memories to burn - that the admission startles a laugh out of her before she can hold it in.</p>
<p>“Sorry!Sorry, it’s not, I’m not laughing at you. I swear. Christ, Mac, I thought you were mad at me! I thought I’d upset you. Shit! I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she babbles, pulling him closer to pepper kisses to his cheeks, his forehead, anywhere she can reach. “I didn’t even think. I’m sorry, baby.” How had she missed all the signs? Him squinting at her reading material, asking her to write Duncan’s symptoms down for him that time, avoiding bedtime stories. The pieces click into place too slowly for a woman who was once at the top of her legal game.</p>
<p>“It just, uh. Never really came up, where I’m from. I learned to shoot and cook and steal rather than picking up a book. Got by making up stories to go with the pictures in old Grognak comics. Liked drawing a few of my own, too,” Mac says. One hand goes up to awkwardly scratch at the nape of his neck. “I know a few words. Ha. Mostly the ingredients on old food packages.”</p>
<p>“That makes sense,” Nora says. “I just… never figured. I’m an idiot. Sorry, again. You could’ve told me, y’know? I would never judge you, Mac. I definitely wouldn’t have survived half the things you did growing up. And now I definitely want to see all of your Grognak drawings. All of them. Every last one.”</p>
<p>This achieves what she wanted it to, drawing a giggle out of him. “They’re pretty good, honestly. You’ll definitely be impressed.” He slumps back into the pillows then, tucks a strand of her hair behind her ear and says, “Just didn’t want you to think any less of me, I guess. Knew you were some hotshot lawyer pre-war. I already f- messed up so much with Lucy when I joined the Gunners. And when I left Duncan… It was just another thing to add into the ‘reasons to ditch MacCready’ column.” Nora winds their hands together to graze a kiss to his knuckles, shaking her head at him. “Never too late to learn, though, right?”</p>
<p>“Sure,” she says, feeling overwhelmingly fond. “If you want, I can teach you. But only if you show me how you pickpocketed that Courser the other day, because honestly? That was, like, freaky efficient. He didn’t even notice the watch was missing until you dropped it making a run for it-“</p>
<p>“That was <em>your</em> fault! You tripped me!”</p>
<p>“I did <em>not</em> trip you. You fell over that cleaning trolley. I remember it in vivid detail. The squeaky left wheel. Your hat coming off as you tumbled. Your little squeal-“</p>
<p>“See, that’s how I know you’re lying. ‘Cause I’ve never squealed, in my life, ever.”</p>
<p>“You can keep telling yourself that…”</p>
<p>When he kisses her quiet, she doesn’t object. Just rolls them both over in the sheets and admires how the early morning light casts shadows over the muscular planes of his chest, how funny he still looks without his hat, how loved she is. And lets the sunrise carry them both into a new day.</p>
<hr/>
<p>Diamond City is still Diamond City, although its mayor is a synth, Piper is celebrating the scoop of her life, and John has had his world ripped apart and sewn back together in the space of a few hours.</p>
<p>“Ain’t like I didn’t suspect,” he sniffles, ass wedged in Nick’s chair and bare feet kicked up on the desk, nine toes wiggling. He’s taken his tricorn off and is swinging it round on an index finger, and if Danse didn’t know him better he’d say he was unaffected save for the tear tracks sneaking down his cheeks.</p>
<p>“It’s alright to be upset,” Nick tells him. He’s busy rooting for his box of parts in a filing cabinet, but has spent the last hour plying his boyfriend with tissues and snack cakes, trying to elicit a smile. “Guy was your brother. It must be a shock.”</p>
<p>“I guess,” Hancock grumbles, tucking his chin to his chest. “Just wish I’d paid a bit more attention. If I was more perceptive-“</p>
<p>“It wasn’t your fault,” Danse says, firmly. “There was nothing you could have done against the Institute. They were too formidable an enemy for just one man. And it doesn’t sound like your brother wanted you to be any closer, before or after. That was on him, too.”</p>
<p>“Thanks.” Hancock stops swinging the hat, gets to his feet, and stands chewing pensively on his bottom lip. “Y’know, if Piper got McDonough’s identity from those files, I bet there’d be more on how you escaped, Nick. And on your time at the Institute, Danse.”</p>
<p>“The thought did cross my mind,” Nick says. “I asked Nora to make us a copy before they’re all destroyed.” He filled them both in last night, about his own mechanical sibling and his missing memories. “She’s leaving them at Home Plate for us. I’ll go by later and pick them up.”</p>
<p>Finally, Nick locates the parts in a cupboard up in his bedroom. There’s an assortment of Gen-2 limbs, a few scraps of silicone and a spare metal hand, all looking a bit on the neglected side. “This lot’ll have to do until the Railroad pass some upgrades over to Amari,” he explains. Danse nods, takes the box from him and rummages inside until he finds a gyro. He motions for Nick to spin around, pushes him gently into the chair Hancock just vacated, and snaps it back into place quick enough that Nick’s simulated breathing doesn’t have time to hitch in pain.</p>
<p>“Sorry,” he apologises anyway. “You alright?”</p>
<p>“Hardly felt a thing.”</p>
<p>“Liar.” He strokes along a nearby wire, making Nick shiver. “You know, we probably have enough time before Nora gets here to… relax a while.”</p>
<p>“Still can’t say <em>fuck</em> in company, huh, soldier?” Hancock winks at him, crossing the room to push his lithe body against Danse’s. “We’ll soon change that.”</p>
<p>They do. Soon they’re curled together on Nick’s single bed; Hancock sandwiched between them, arching into Danse’s touch, with his face smushed into the crook of Nick’s shoulder. “Let us take care of you, for once,” Danse whispers. He disrobes Hancock with the reverence he and his costume deserve, folding the frock coat neatly over a chair with the flag belt on top. His shirt comes next, baring Hancock’s chest to the humid air of the detective agency. Nick helps tug his pants to his ankles, working them off and onto the chair to join the other garments, until he’s deliciously naked between them, already half-hard.</p>
<p>“I don’t have any lube,” Nick admits. “Ellie might’ve left some baby oil lyin’ around, though. I’ll go and look.”</p>
<p>He disappears off the bed, leaving Hancock and Danse momentarily alone. Danse takes the time to whip his own shirt over his head, undoing his tightening jeans with one hand while drawing Hancock in for a kiss with the other. “You look beautiful like this,” he breathes. “Always, but especially like this.”</p>
<p>“You do, too,” Hancock tells him. “C’mere, let me-“</p>
<p>He tugs Danse closer to yank his jeans down and get his mouth around his cock, raising it to full mast. Danse clenches his fingers in Nick’s sheets to stop himself pushing Hancock further onto his dick, but the other man scrabbles for his hands anyway and places them gently on his scalp, a polite request if John Hancock ever made one. Danse pulls him in gently at first, not wanting to move too fast, but if John’s impatient hum is anything to go by, <em>fast</em> is exactly what he wants.</p>
<p>“We’re supposed to be looking after you,” Danse manages to get out between groans. Hancock swirls his tongue around the head of Danse’s cock in reply, then slips him further into his throat.</p>
<p>“Y’know, it’s okay to let yourself be loved,” he says. “You work so hard for- ungh - for other people. You deserve to be taken - ah, do that again, please - care of.”</p>
<p>Hancock pulls off with a grunt, looking up at Danse with an expression he can only describe as petulant. “What, you think I don’t enjoy this? Danse, I like sucking cock. Your cock, in particular. It makes me feel good, too. So, just, let me, yeah?”</p>
<p>“Yeah,” Danse agrees. “Yeah. But after, you fuck me. You let us get you off. Deal?”</p>
<p>“Deal.” Then he’s back on Danse’s cock like it’s a damn lollipop, making the most obscene slurping sounds as he bobs up and down. Danse is so gone he barely registers Nick’s return and subsequent chuckle, loses himself to the rhythm and glide of a hot mouth.</p>
<p>“Started without me, did ya?” Nick kneels back up on the bed, tosses a bottle of oil at Danse, who fails to catch it. “Should smooth the way a bit.”</p>
<p>“Thanks,” Hancock chirps, raising himself up and away from Danse’s crotch. Danse whines at the loss, can’t help himself, but Hancock’s already urging him to flip on his back. “Nicky, let us at your wires, please?”</p>
<p>“Anything, love.” Hancock wastes no time twining his fingers in the opening at Nick’s neck. They’ve already closed up the hole in his skull with glue and plastic jigsaw shards, but there’s still room for the two of them to stroke into the nest of cables wadded around Nick’s metal spine. His voice glitches with static as they work him over, sending ripples of arousal through Danse. He watches as Hancock leans over to bring their mouths together, sees steam rising up out of Nick’s neck port. Drags his own hands down the length of Nick’s arms to feel him shudder, twines their fingers together in his lap.</p>
<p>“Stop, stop,” Nick pants eventually. “You two first. I wanna watch.”</p>
<p>“Tease,” Hancock says, pecking him on the nose. “You gonna let me fuck you now, big guy?”</p>
<p>“Depends,” Danse answers. “You going to tie me up again?”</p>
<p>Something shifts in Hancock’s gaze, a darkening of his eyes, a twitch in his jaw. “That a challenge, sunshine?” He’s reaching for his belt when Nick halts him with a hand on his arm, moving to rummage under the bed and emerging with a loop of rope.</p>
<p>“You dark horse, you,” John says. Danse feels something drop in his stomach, a swell of arousal so intense it weakens his legs.</p>
<p>Nick only laughs at him, says, “I catch criminals for a living, remember? Sometimes they get out of hand.”</p>
<p>“I’ll bet.” Hancock is already snatching the rope up out of his grasp, testing its strength between his hands. “You up for this, Danse?”</p>
<p>“Yes,” Danse says, too quickly. He bunches his wrists together and offers them out to Hancock, feeling every inch of his body prickling in anticipation of that cord binding them tight together.</p>
<p>But Hancock shakes his head. “Uh uh. Behind your back.” Danse’s obeys, and feels the scratch of the rope against the sensitive skin of his inner arm. Hancock secures them tight, cinching Danse’s hands so they brush together. “That feel okay, sunshine?”</p>
<p>“Affirmative,” he replies before he can think better of it. Hancock reaches around his body to tweak Danse’s nipples, pinching hard, dragging a low moan out of the larger man. “There’s, ah. Something I’d like to try, if you’re amenable.”</p>
<p>“And what’s that, Dansey?” Hancock asks, busy licking a stripe down the planes of his chest. Danse swallows around his next words, sounding them out in his head, trying to muster the courage to speak them aloud.</p>
<p>“I want… to be quiet. For you to make me be quiet,” he says, and somehow doesn’t sound anything like how it had in his head. Danse feels an angry blush spreading up his neck, painting his cheeks a furious scarlet. He should be better at this by now.</p>
<p>“A gag, huh?” John muses. “I’m sure we can work something out.” He reaches over for his flag belt, smiling slyly, while Nick helps Danse shuffle up against the headboard for better access. “If you need to stop, you tap out by thumpin’ a hand on the bed, okay? Or a foot, if you can’t move your hands enough. One tap for slow down, two for stop, okay?”</p>
<p>Danse nods, can’t manage anything else.</p>
<p>“Show me,” Hancock says, flexing the belt. Danse taps the headboard with a fist once, twice. Then his feet against the mattress. When John’s apparently satisfied, he motions for Danse to open his mouth and pulls the fabric taut against his tongue, knotting it tight at the base of his skull. Danse attempts a word, but nothing but indistinct mumbling emerges.</p>
<p>“This turns you on, doesn’t it, Danse? Being at our mercy. All trussed up like this.”</p>
<p>“Mmm,” he tries. Hancock taps an index finger against his bottom lip, prying it open a little wider.</p>
<p>“You look gorgeous like this,” he tells him. “Doesn’t he, Nicky?”</p>
<p>“Oh yeah,” Nick agrees, but his gaze is all for John. Danse doesn’t blame him - he’s all dangerous energy, the regal king of the zombies overlooking his kingdom. Dark eyes glinting in the low light of Nick’s room, curtains drawn, Hancock looks <em>wild</em>.</p>
<p>Danse jolts when Hancock’s fingers find his hole, bucking up into the touch. Nick helpfully provides a squirt of oil into John’s palm, reaches up to twine his metal fingers in Danse’s hair, tugging softly at the strands.</p>
<p>“Y’know what? I got a better idea,” Hancock announces. Fingers dripping with slick, he reaches down between his own legs to press two fingers into himself. “Wanna ride you, Danse. That sound okay?”</p>
<p>Danse nods frantically, hips thrusting without his say so. When Hancock’s stretched himself out he wastes no time in pressing their bodies together, lowering himself down onto Danse’s hard length with a hiss of breath.</p>
<p>“Feels amazin’,” he narrates. One of his hands darts out to tease along Nick’s neck, stopping just short of his wires, and Nick lets out a frustrated whine.</p>
<p>“Touch me, John, please,” he begs. Danse, for his part, can do nothing but groan at the feeling of Hancock’s asscheeks against his pelvis, taking the whole length of him in, drooling around the gag.</p>
<p>Nick cries out when John’s fingers finally meet his wires. Speech abandons all three of them then, and for a long while the only sounds in the room are the slap of flesh and the whistle of steam escaping Nick. He comes first, swearing like a sailor, collapses back onto the mattress when he’s done. He strokes along Danse’s side, making him shiver, and eventually winds a lazy hand around Hancock’s dick to help them both along.</p>
<p>“S’perfect, just like that,” Nick encourages. Hancock snaps his hips a little harder between the two focal points, and Danse feels his orgasm building like a dam about to burst inside him. The gag makes it impossible to do anything but make wordless cries, and with one final thrust he’s coming, and coming, and coming, and Hancock’s following him with a shout of his own.</p>
<p>In the aftermath, they lie twined together. Danse’s hands are still trapped beneath him, losing feeling, but he can’t bring himself to shift. He slips free of Hancock’s body, and the ghoul reaches up with arms like noodles to undo the knot at the back of his head.</p>
<p>“You two will be the death of me,” Nick tells them. “I mean that.”</p>
<p>“Not if you kill me first,” Danse huffs. He wriggles a bit, uncomfortable in his bonds now that his orgasm’s washed over him. “Could someone…”</p>
<p>“Oh, yeah, I gotcha.” Nick unties him with deft hands, making quick work of the knot, and Danse rotates his wrists to bring the feeling back, admiring the reddish marks left by the rope.</p>
<p>“That was fun,” Hancock says, grinning wide. “We should do that again sometime.”</p>
<p>“Oh, yeah,” Nick agrees.</p>
<p>“Definitely,” says Danse.</p>
<p>He likes who he is around them. Enjoys this the most, even more than the sex - the three of them, laughing together, unashamed. He never knew it could be like this, back on the Prydwen, when all his exploits took place under the cover of darkness, or in the early days of him fucking Hancock, away from prying eyes and with the looming threat of being found out hanging over him. He loves them, like this. Wouldn’t trust anyone else to tie him up and keep him safe all at the same time.</p>
<p>“I’m gonna go to Nora’s,” Nick says after a minute, standing and stretching his arms high above his head. Danse moves to go with him, sees that Hancock has already fallen asleep with his head on Nick’s pillow. He’s only ever sleepy after sex, it seems, and out like a light as soon as his orgasm hits. It makes Danse feel sickeningly affectionate, makes him tug the blankets up to John’s chin and press a kiss to his forehead, lax with slumber.</p>
<p>“He’s been through a lot these past few weeks,” Danse says, looking fondly over his lover. “He was frantic with missing you, Nick. It was… frightening.”</p>
<p>“Can’t be easy on him, this stuff with his brother,” Nick admits. “You want to come with me to Home Plate? We can be back before he wakes up.”</p>
<p>Danse does. They shuck clothes back on and steal out of the agency silently, making it to Nora’s place without incident. She’s already set up inside with the sniper Danse recognises from Sanctuary, two young children playing on the floor behind her as she opens the door to them. Danse worries for a second that she’ll spot his mussed hair and rumpled clothes and guess what they’ve just been up to, then decides he doesn’t much care.</p>
<p>“Oh, hey guys. Came for the files, huh? I have them here - you’ll need a terminal to access them, obviously. Didn’t have time to print anything out.”</p>
<p>“No problem, doll,” Nick tells her. She hands them both a holotape each, smiling awkwardly. The kids come clamouring over in no time, little hands grabbing for the tail of Nick’s coat, asking for more stories.</p>
<p>“Nick’s a synth like me!” the older boy tells his - brother? Danse isn’t sure. The younger child is shier, but his mouth forms a smile around his thumb.</p>
<p>“Can I be a synth too?” he asks, looking between them. “I wanna be cool like Nick.”</p>
<p>“You’re already cool, mister,” Nora tells him, bending to kiss him on the top of his head.</p>
<p>Danse hasn’t forgiven her, not yet. Isn’t sure if he ever will. But looking at her with the children, how she rests a gentle hand on the older boy’s shoulder and reassures the little one, he thinks that they’ll get there, one day. Maybe.</p>
<p>“Are you a synth too?” the older boy asks, turning to Danse. He wonders if something has shown on his face during their conversation, or if all synths apart from him can sense one another without being told. Then he remembers that this child has been raised in the Institute, surrounded by his kind every day, that it’s no stranger for him than it is for Danse to see humans populating the Commonwealth.</p>
<p>“Shaun, we don’t ask questions like that out here, honey-“ Nora starts to say, but Danse cuts her off.</p>
<p>“Yes, I am. I’m Danse. It’s good to meet you, Shaun. And…?”</p>
<p>“M’Duncan,” the smaller boy says. “You’re really tall. How did you get so tall?”</p>
<p>Danse considers it. “I suppose they built me this way.”</p>
<p>“Woah,” Duncan says in response, like that’s all the answer he needed. Danse fights to keep the fond smile off his face and fails.</p>
<p>“Anyway, we’d best be off,” Nick says. “I’ll see you around, Nora. And kids - you ever want another detective story, my assistant Ellie is always around here. I’m sure she’ll be happy to regale you both.”</p>
<p>Danse bobs his head in thanks to Nora for the files, bids them goodbye, and follows Nick around a couple of alleyways until they’re out in an open space. There’s an allotment to one side, a few ramshackle buildings to their right, and for all he’s heard about the great green jewel, Diamond City’s walls are surprisingly underwhelming.</p>
<p>They stroll over to the water purifier, where a teenager stands touting his wares and a few bloatflies hover around, high enough to avoid being shot down by the security guards. The day’s a hot one; Danse is glad for the thin t-shirt he put on this morning, has to wipe sweat from his brow regardless.</p>
<p>“Y’know, I always thought the Institute threw me away,” Nick says after a minute, looking out across the water. “That’s all I remembered, waking up in a dumpster somewhere, in a new body, with all these memories of a human cop filling up my brain. Took me a good few years to work out who I was, to get people onside, to start trusting me. And then, bam. I find out that’s all a lie, and I have an ally somewhere I never even remembered. My whole existence, uprooted again. They took that from me, but now there’s a chance I can get it back.”</p>
<p>“I felt the same, when Nora mentioned the memory wipe. She said the Railroad changed my face. My whole appearance, my whole self. Everything I was, they took. I’m... intrigued, to know who I might’ve been.”</p>
<p>“You want those memories back?” Nick wonders. Danse thinks about it. Thinks back to those synths they saw down in the Institute, how they scrubbed and polished and served, how he overheard one of them reporting to a human scientist that an experimental upgrade had lost them control of their legs. How he and Hancock had stumbled across a pile of discarded synthetic bodies in a back storeroom, tossed haphazardly on top of each other and left in darkness.</p>
<p>“I don’t know,” he admits. “I thought I did. It felt like something had been stolen from me. Who I was before I was… this. The Brotherhood soldier, then the Brotherhood exile.”</p>
<p>But he’s more than that now, isn’t he? A friend to Cutler and Haylen. A lover to Hancock and Nick. A rescuer, maybe, if he’s being kind to himself. Someone who enjoys modding power armour and sketching blueprints and secretly sneaking passages of poetry from the books stashed in Hancock’s quarters when nobody’s around. A man who’s trying, at long last, to be a better person.</p>
<p>“Sometimes I feel like I can’t trust myself. Because if I didn’t know I was a synth, if I didn’t know how much of my past was real and how much wasn’t, who did that make me, really? But now… I’m not sure I want to know. I like the memories I have, of our little junk shop in the Capital Wasteland. Of my best friend, Cutler. I don’t want to know how much of that was invented.”</p>
<p>“Some days I feel like an empty shell rather than a person,” Nick tells him. “Knowing that my entire personality is a sham, that I’m just modelled off some private eye back in the day. And then John reminds me how I set up the agency by myself. How I got these Diamond City knuckleheads to see past my synthetic parts to the man underneath. How I’m more me than I think. Still doesn’t feel like enough, sometimes. I’ve always felt a gaping hole, like there was always somethin’ missing.” He sighs, fumbles in the pocket of his trench coat for a pack of cigarettes and lights one up. Offers Danse a drag, which he accepts, still experiencing a little thrill at the thought of his lips where Nick’s have been. “It’s different for you, I think. They carved a life out for you, a life that was your own. A better one than you might’ve had, probably.”</p>
<p>“What do you think I should do, Nick?” Danse asks.</p>
<p>“I can’t decide that for you, doll. You gotta figure that one out for yourself,” Nick gives him a smile, a pat on the shoulder. “I’m gonna go look at these files, because I want to know where I really came from. See if I can make a connection with this… brother of mine, I guess. You… think on it, a little while.”</p>
<p>Danse watches him go. Squeezes the holotape between his finger and thumb like he did his dog tags all those months ago. Takes a breath that still tastes like Nick’s smoke, and launches it into the water.</p>
<p>Feels freer than he has in a long time when it sinks to the bottom.</p>
<p>Danse turns and strides away, to where his lovers are waiting.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>And it is DONE!</p>
<p>Thank you to everyone who stuck with this series from the beginning, y'all are amazing. It has been a JOURNEY, and this chapter especially just ran away with me, but here it is, three years in the making! </p>
<p>I'll be uploading a short epilogue in the next couple of days, so keep your eyes peeled for that.</p>
<p>(And I totally did not plan out an entire vacation fic where they go to Far Harbor together, nope, no siree.)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Epilogue</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>
  <i>When the song finishes, Nick treats him to a kiss, slow and sensual, then reaches up and plucks Hancock’s tricorn from his head. Sly as anything, he switches their respective headgear around, and Hancock never knew he needed to see Nick looking all dashing and dangerous before but, God, does it suit him.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“This shouldn’t be as hot as it is,” he complains as they spin into an effortless jitterbug. “Not while we’re in company.” </i>
</p><p>
  <i>“What can I say?” Nick asks. “I’m a hat guy.”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“You’re somethin’, alright.”</i>
</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The Third Rail is already bursting with revellers when Hancock makes his entrance, fashionably late as the mayor should be. An old rock n’ roll song is piping out of the jukebox while Magnolia takes a smoke break, all of Charlie’s metal arms blurred with motion as he pours shots for a crowd of punters at the bar, and a group of drifters have formed a makeshift dancefloor to whirl each other around on.</p><p>This is what Hancock always wanted his town to be.</p><p>Officially, it’s a ‘we destroyed the big bad bogeyman’ party. Less officially, it’s a ‘welcome home Nick’ party, and a ‘congrats on getting your act together Danse’ party, and, more generally, a ‘show some love for your mayor’ party.</p><p>Ain’t so different from a regular day in that regard. Sue him. He deserves a night off, and what’s one of those without a little self indulgence?</p><p>“John! Over here!” That’s Nick, perched on a barstool, waving him over with a newly covered silicone hand. He’s lifting a shot of whiskey in Hancock’s direction, which he takes eagerly, downs it like a shot and relishes in the burn.</p><p>“Time to get this party started properly, eh, sunshine?” Hancock bends to press a kiss to Nick’s forehead under the brim of his hat, one arm sneaking across the synth’s shoulders to tug him a little closer. He takes the adjacent barstool, motions Charlie over for a couple of refills. Plucks a Jet canister out of his pocket to suck on while they survey the crowd.</p><p>“Reckon everyone around here needed this,” Nick observes. “Bit of time to let loose.”</p><p>“Us included,” a deeper voice from behind them intones. Hancock twists in his seat to find Danse standing over them, a hand braced on each of their backs. He’s wearing the same busted up tuxedo he donned for their first date all them months ago, only this time it doesn’t feel as much like an omen, and he’s gelled his hair back out of his eyes. It’s getting long these days. Hancock loves it, loves to curl his fingers into the strands and tug. Loves how it falls into a cowlick in the middle of his forehead, bringing out the flecks of hazel in his eyes.</p><p>“Where have you been hidin’ all this time?” Nick asks him, tipping his head back for a kiss. The big man obliges, smiling into Nick’s lips while he squeezes Hancock’s neck so tenderly he could swoon.</p><p>“Daisy kept trying to drag me onto the dancefloor, so I retreated to the back room,” he mutters, sounding embarrassed.</p><p>“But-“</p><p>“Please, no jokes about me not living up to my name,” Danse pre-empts, already chuckling. “I’m a terrible dancer. Nobody needs to see that.”</p><p>“Don’t worry, love. We’ll get you drunk enough that you won’t care by the end of the night,” Hancock tells him with a wink. “Or get everyone else so drunk they don’t notice.”</p><p>Nick lights up a cigarette and puffs away at it, while Hancock briefly wonders how much booze it would take to get Danse up there with him, twirling him around only to press him close to his huge chest-</p><p>Only now his gaze has been snagged by the couple making their way down the stairs.</p><p>He hasn’t seen Nora since the Institute blew up. But here she is, on MacCready’s arm, looking sheepish but <em>not sheepish enough</em> as far as Hancock’s concerned. She’s dressed nice, by Commonwealth standards - not polished like she was last month, just pretty in a natural sort of way. She’s wearing a cornflower blue dress and her hair’s pinned back, no makeup, and there’s a tear in the dress that shows when she strides over to the bar to order a drink.</p><p>“Mayor Hancock,” Nora grits out. Mac’s on her heels, sliding an arm around her waist with a half-hearted grin for the three of them. Worst of it is, Hancock can’t decide if he has anything to apologise for. After what the Institute did to his kid - and it’d all been in those files Nora found, filtered down through the grapevine to Goodneighbor, how an agent switched out his ‘cure’ for a placebo to lure Nora back there, knowing what it would do to a five year old boy with eyes just like his father's - Hancock probably doesn’t have the right to judge. Still twinges a bit when he thinks too hard about it though. And as for Nora… let’s just say he won’t be sending her on any more jobs any time soon.</p><p>He offers them both a grunt in return, grabs for another glass of whiskey and sips it like he’s some rich bastard in a pre-war flick. Like he knows what he’s doing, because all of a sudden he feels like he’s drowning.</p><p>“Come on,” Danse says suddenly. He tugs at Hancock’s hand, urging him up out of his stool, patting Nick’s shoulder to drag him along too. “We’re supposed to be having fun.”</p><p>“What are we-“</p><p>“We’re dancing.”</p><p>Magnolia’s back onstage now, crooning a love song into the microphone, and Danse arranges them in a loose triangle on the floor. Hancock’s never much imagined how to slow dance with two other people, but they make it work, somehow. Hancock’s arms end up around Nick and Danse’s backs, cinching them in tight, and they manage to sway in a vague sort of rhythm. It’s awkward, and multiple feet are stepped on multiple times, but when the song ends and something faster comes on they’re all breathless with laughter and love anyway. Nick convinces Danse to stay for what should probably be a jive but turns into a creased-at-the-waist-with-giggles affair, watching the big man trip over his own shoes and stumble into a ghoul couple mid-makeout.</p><p>In the end, Danse excuses himself to fetch more drinks, leaving Nick to twirl Hancock effortlessly round. The detective’s a talented dancer; Hancock shouldn’t be surprised - the guy’s mentioned human Nick meeting Jenny at a dance hall - but he manages to be anyway. It’s one thing being dimly aware of something that’s probably true and a whole other kettle of fish having the one and only Nick Valentine, synthetic private eye, dip him low to the floor with one warm hand in the small of his back without breaking eye contact.</p><p>When the song finishes, Nick treats him to a kiss, slow and sensual, then reaches up and plucks Hancock’s tricorn from his head. Sly as anything, he switches their respective headgear around, and Hancock never knew he needed to see Nick looking all dashing and dangerous but it <em>suits him</em>, somehow, and steals John’s breath away.</p><p>“This shouldn’t be as hot as it is,” he complains as they spin into an effortless jitterbug. “Not while we’re in company.”</p><p>“What can I say?” Nick asks. “I’m a hat guy.”</p><p>“You’re somethin’, alright.”</p><p>He’s faintly aware of Nora and Mac joining them a little ways away on the dancefloor, MacCready just as clumsy as Danse was, but he pays them no mind. Not with Nick looking like he does. But, shit, how could Nora have kept this man prisoner for as long as she did, knowing Hancock at least would be frantic with worry? Knowing how much Nick was hurting, how they'd have to piece him back together again? It burns him up inside, makes the back of his neck prickle with the anticipation of betrayal. And suddenly, he needs to get out.</p><p>They find Danse in the crowd, tug him towards the stairs, and the three of them stumble up and out into the fresh air. They wander through the square and over to the main gates, and Hancock shows Nick and Danse up to the unmanned guard post so they can look at the city skyline, all unblemished save for the radstorm coming in in the far distance and the faint green hue of the Glowing Sea.</p><p>“It’s beautiful up here,” Danse says. “You can see the whole of Boston. And the stars, even.”</p><p>Nick smiles dopily up at him, pulls out a second cigarette for them to split. “If I was slightly less intoxicated I’d recite you both a poem. Ah, well. Maybe in the morning. Got one by Donne that’ll fit perfect.”</p><p>“I can see a couple things prettier than the sky,” Hancock offers in response.</p><p>“Now that’s cheesy, even for you,” says Nick.</p><p>“I was gonna say my reflection in this metal, and this piece a’ pie I brought for us to share, but hey, if that’s how you wanna take it-“</p><p>“Oh, ha ha.”</p><p>“I really did bring pie though,” Hancock says, producing it - only slightly squashed - from his coat pocket. It’s the fancy kind, wrangled from one of those old food preservation machines, though he’d given up on the claw and ended up smashing the glass with the butt of his shotgun. Hell, life’s for living, ain’t it? And it had looked damn good, sitting there all lonely with nobody to eat it. “Danse, you want first bite?”</p><p>“Mmmhm,” Danse agrees, leaning over so Hancock can feed him the first perfect corner. A blissed out moan escapes his lips as he chews. Hancock helps himself to a taste, finds it even better than he’d hoped. Maybe there’s some logic behind all that pre-war bullshit after all. He can imagine starting a nuclear war for pie this good.</p><p>“You wanna try, Nicky?” John asks. If whatever storage unit Nick has in place of a stomach can handle enough alcohol to down a bull, it can surely take a bite of what is possibly the most delicious pie on the planet.</p><p>“You sure, doll? It’ll be kinda wasted on me.”</p><p>“Not wasted,” Danse tells him. “Self-deprecation is no good for anybody. Trust me, I know.”</p><p>“Took the words right outta my mouth, sunshine,” Hancock replies, easing the plate over to Nick so he can gingerly pick up the pie and break off a mouthful.</p><p>“S’actually good,” Nick announces after a moment of contemplation. “Just like momma used to make. If I, y’know, remembered what she used to make. Or what she looked like. Or anything at all about her. Seems the ol’ Institute didn’t bother to patch in <em>all</em> of old Nick’s memories.” He sighs, tips his head back to look at the sky proper. “Makes me wonder what else is missin’.”</p><p>“You find any leads on your missing brother yet?” Hancock wonders.</p><p>“Could be a sister,” Danse points out.</p><p>“Could be neither.” Hancock shrugs. “Sibling, then, I guess.”</p><p>“As a matter of fact, I did. Heard rumours of a synth colony over on an island called Far Harbor. Nothing solid, not yet, but I got multiple sources talkin’ about a synth with a face as creepy as mine.”</p><p>“Your face is not creepy,” Danse tells him, although John’s pretty sure Nick knows deep down. They’re working on it, anyway. Baby steps.</p><p>“It’s actually one of my favourite faces,” Hancock chimes in.</p><p>“And your eyes-“</p><p>“And that part in your neck where I can wiggle my fingers in <em>just so</em>-“</p><p>“And-“</p><p>“Alright, alright, don’t push it,” Nick grumbles. “Anyway. S’probably too far out to go without an excuse, but it just so happens I heard about a case up there too. Missing person. A nice enough family, daughter suspected she was a synth and disappeared.”</p><p>“Foul play?” Hancock asks, not wanting to contemplate what he’ll do if Nick says yes. He wouldn’t put it past some parents out here to off their own kids if they suspected they’ve been replaced by an Institute spy, but with the big baddies eliminated it’d just be plain ol’ bigotry.</p><p>“I don’t think so. I’ve known the family a few years. My guess is the girl wanted to satisfy her own curiosity so popped off to find someone else who might understand.”</p><p>“Knew there was a reason you’re the detective in this relationship,” John says.</p><p>“Do you want to go there, then?” Danse asks. “To this… Far Harbor?”</p><p>“If you two are amenable, sure. But I get it if you’re not. It’d be a long haul. Few days hike at least, then a couple of days at sea. I can go it alone if you’d rather stay here.”</p><p>“Are you kidding me?” Hancock asks, trying not to sound too incredulous. “You really think I’d pass up a chance to go on vacation?”</p><p>“And you really think,” Danse continues, “I’d let the two of you waltz off into the sunset and leave me behind?”</p><p>“Aww, we’d never leave you, Dansey.” John reaches over to peck Danse’s cheek, winding his arms around his waist and leaning back against the warm thrum of Nick’s body. “We love ya too much.”</p><p>“I love you too.” And if Danse’s reply is delivered with a long-suffering sigh, well that’s even better, because the thing is, Hancock <em>knows</em>. Trusts them both to keep him safe, and keep each other safe. Even if Nora keeps sticking her nose into Goodneighbor and he can’t find the heart to kick her out. Even if he keeps expecting a gruffer voice to emerge from Nick’s throat. Even if he can’t ever erase the words <em>recall code</em> from his or Danse’s memory.</p><p>They’ll face it, together.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I swear I'm done now!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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